Male Sauna
Logline
The project “Male Sauna” is rooted in the search for MALE identity, analyzed intimately and in depth through their oneiric dimension: everything men dream of being and doing, but hide and do not dare to confess – only to discover that behind every “accomplished” man there still lie the dreams, fears, and fantasies of the child he once was.
Synopsis
Five Italian men meet in an apartment in central Milan, guests at a dinner party organized by Pepi, a friend of theirs and the wife of one of them. They converse confidentially and with irony throughout the evening, talking about their lives and expressing themselves.
The five friends are:
MICHELANGELO PASTORE: the host of the dinner party is from Naples but lives in Milan where he got married thirty years ago. He works with satisfaction and success in the financial and real estate sector and he is also the managing director of a production company – Michelangelo Film – that bears his name.
UMBERTO GIOLLI: Born in Milan but living in Liguria, he has always been a nature lover. He started working as a respected advertising director until, due to his professional vision clashing with the advertising establishment, he was no longer called upon to work as a director. He has now become a refined and sought-after landscape architect, also commissioned by the FAI (Italian Environment Fund) to curate several of its sites.
YOON C. JOYCE: South Korean actor who has found success in Italy and abroad and is now shooting his first film as a director. Born in Seoul but raised in Bergamo – where he was adopted at the age of three months – he was the victim of terrible episodes of racism during his childhood, which is why he loves to feel and identify completely with Western culture.
MAURO MARINO: a talented actor who has been performing in theatre, cinema and television for 43 years. Born in Abruzzo, he completely abandoned his masculinity when he was a child and at the age of forty married Marco in a special ceremony celebrated at the source of the Pescara River in his native Popoli. He cooks typical Abruzzo desserts and his passion is embroidering tapestries.
MARCO FOTI: Born in La Spezia, he is a talented and sought-after assistant director in the world of cinema and television for over twenty years. No longer very young, he finally decides to come out to his family and experiences an intense love story with Mauro, whom he married and with whom he shares a beautiful and intimate relationship.
The dinner ends with collective toast, and a few months later they set off together on a trip to a Nordic country to celebrate Michelangelo’s 60th birthday.
And so it happens that, as they travel through the countryside and towns of this Nordic country, they discover unexpected places and find themselves confronted with ways of thinking and emotions very different from those they are used to, until they arrive near a sauna, where they decide to go in.
Light filters through the wooden planks of the sauna which juts directly over the sea. They are seated in silence on the wooden benches with towels around their waists.
Michelangelo is the first to ask himself whether he would have been the same without social superstructures, family, and the Catholic Church. He wonders whether he truly did what he wanted or whether he had been conditioned.
Themes such as personal fulfillment and social conditioning emerge in each of them, revealing the two lives of every man: the one lived by following his inner “demons,” and the other lived with awareness of who he really is.
From the myth of the hero to femicide as an offense to male sovereignty, many and varied are the themes addressed and discussed by this group of men, who will also confront with an unexpected intervention of a Nordic famous writer who arrives in the sauna, and with that of a young man who works for the sauna, who contrasts with them in his openness to life…
And it is there that they end up confessing their most intimate dreams, sharing the most intimate and private thoughts each of them holds about what it means to be a man – things they would never have confessed before without the famous “cathartic effect” of a sauna.
Until, exhausted by the intense heat, they all go outside and dive laughing into the sea.
Michelangelo, Yoon, Umberto, Marco, and Mauro are on the plane returning to Italy; clouds drift past the airplane window during the closing credits.
director's note
The creative documentary enters the contemporary debate on male identity and the meaning of being male through a journey in which the sauna becomes the narrative thread, opening spaces for vulnerability and dialogue – an environment that creates intimacy for an emotional journey.
What makes this project unique and unprecedented is that Male Sauna is conceived, written, and directed by a woman, overturning traditional dynamics and leaving room for the protagonists’ spontaneous and engaging narratives.
They become the authors of their own stories, without the film taking sides, criticizing, or becoming complicit – simply listening, and transforming a documentary about masculinity into a documentary about dialogue and understanding between men and women, where an ironic and light approach also builds a narrative bridge between Northern and Southern Europe.
ORIGINAL TITLE: Male Sauna
ENGLISH TITLE: Male Sauna
GENRE: Creative documentary
CATEGORY: Male identity; masculinity and vulnerability; Contemporary dialogue between Northern and Southern Europe, female gaze on masculinity
FORMAT: HD
RUNTIME: 78′ – 52′
LANGUAGE: Italian, with English and Nordic-language sequences (subtitled)
ORIGINAL CONCEPT, SCRIPT, DIRECTOR: Pepi Romagnoli
PROTAGONISTS: Michelangelo Pastore, Umberto Giolli, Yoon C. Joyce, Mauro Marino, Marco Foti – A famous writer from the Country that will co-produce the project, also published in Italy by Iperborea Publisher – A young Nordic sauna worker who lives nearby
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND CAMERA OPERATOR: Giuseppe Campo (Italy), along with a director from the co-producer Country
EDITING: Edoardo Maimone (Italy)
POST-PRODUCTION EDITOR & SUPERVISOR: Edoardo Maimone, along with a post-production supervisor from the co-production country
MUSIC: Claptone, “Theatre Puppet”
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Michelangelo Film
PRODUCER: Michelangelo Pastore
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Maurizio Santarelli
CO-PRODUCTION COMPANY: looking for – to be defined
PRODUCTION STATUS: Development
EXPECTED RELEASE: to be defined within 2027
