On a torrid Sardinian summer day, while the scorching sun seems to evaporate even the drops of sweat, a small group of boys from Villanovaforru stumble upon an adventure destined to change their way of seeing the town and its history. It is the short film VillanovafHorror, a work of about 25 minutes produced during the film laboratory of the Sardinian festival Arrexini, 2022 edition, which has been held for a few years in the towns of Villanovaforru and Ussaramanna. Now, finding out if the boys will be able to escape the hidden dangers is simple: VillanovafHorror has been uploaded to YouTube on the institutional page of the Municipality of Villanovaforru. Giacomo Vacca, one of the boys who played a role in the film, hopes that "the short will also be seen by people who have not yet had the opportunity to see it".
Set right in the deserted and overheated streets of Villanovaforru, the film leads the viewer to the places and stories of a town that, behind its apparent tranquility, holds a mysterious legend, ready to reveal itself in the moonlight.
The actors are young local boys, in addition to Giacomo Vacca, also Alessandro Cabiddu , Michele Farris, Francesco and Chiara Ibba. Under the guidance of experts Stefano Cau and Maurizio Loi, the boys embark on a journey that takes them beyond the confines of their everyday lives to the legendary Figu Niedda bridge, a symbol of danger and a dark past. As they say in those parts, the bridge is marked by stories that would test even the most skeptical: stories of presences and mysterious disappearances, which remain imprinted in the memory of that segment of the older population.
After the phase in which inexplicable disappearances are listed, the short film turns black and white, with a disturbing sentence that seems like the beginning of terror: "Since 1963, the year of construction of the Figu Niedda bridge, the population of Villanovaforru has been in constant decline. There is no further data on the matter." This is the beginning that immediately immerses the audience in an atmosphere suspended between reality and fiction. An action that develops through evocative images of a small village in its almost spectral nocturnal charm. A fiction, however, that does not embrace the reality of things: in the municipality there are often new residents and a marked multi-ethnicity.
