Up There

Nino was a bricklayer and lived in the outskirts of Palermo with his family. Now he lives alone on top of a mountain and is a prophet. He calls himself Isravele – and the name must be read backwards to understand its meaning. Up there, on a barren mountain on the edge of the city, is his home: an old abandoned observatory that in twenty years of solitary work he transformed into a portentous naive temple. Traveling up and down the mountain on a daily basis, Isravele takes with his backpack loaded with pebbles and concrete. His idea is to bring the bottom to the top in order to purify it. He transforms neglect into beauty, through constant work, bordering on the inhuman, which he calls prayer. But for some time more and more tourists and onlookers have been threatening the peace of this place, where a mysterious man is said to be alive, who announces the coming of the Apocalypse. Over there, in the city, they call him the hermit.