LARVAE
“Turin, 1909. Cesare Lombroso, the renowned founder of Criminal Anthropology, arrives at the secluded villa of Lazar, an elderly illusionist.
Lombroso, who in recent years has devoted himself to the study of Spiritualism, challenges Lazar: to prove that the supernatural exists and that it may be the cause of a brutal crime.
What could have triggered the murderous fury in the young seminarian Tommaso, and what connects him to Lazar’s alleged paranormal abilities and to his son Lorenzo? Is it merely illusionism, or is there something real?
The ancient, decaying villa of Lazar hides many truths, and Lombroso’s scientific vision will have to open itself to new perspectives.”
The Larvae project, conceived in 2014 and previously developed as a feature film screenplay, was inspired by the Museo di Antropologia Criminale Cesare Lombroso in Turin. One aspect that struck Alessandro Rota was that the museum barely mentioned—aside from a modest display—Lombroso’s growing interest in Spiritualism, which led him to write an essay (“Research on Hypnotic and Spiritual Phenomena”), the proofs of which he revised just hours before his death on October 19, 1909.
Considered by many academic colleagues as the weakness of an old man, Lombroso in fact approached the subject with his usual positivist method. This real historical inspiration became the foundation of the film’s concept, in which science confronts the supernatural.
“Larvae is a short film in which the events are closely tied to History: although it is a fictional story, I wanted to remain faithful to the historical consistency of the character of Cesare Lombroso, imagining how he would have actually behaved when confronting the so-called Spiritual Larvae mentioned in Spiritist literature. Among them, the well-known “Le Livre des esprits” by Allan Kardec, published in 1857.
When I found myself in front of the display case containing Lombroso’s skeleton—one he himself chose to donate to science and exhibit in his museum—I felt that telling a lesser-known side of this figure could be the right approach, especially as he is still at the center of occasional controversy today.
It was inevitable to refer to his famous theories, and so I asked myself: how would Lombroso have approached Spiritualism, if not by hypothesizing that the supernatural could somehow influence the actions of someone not physiognomically predisposed to crime?
Larvae is therefore a short film that moves between science, hidden truths, and unknown forces. But not only that. Larvae also tells of the darker side, the unexplainable, and the consequences of human emotions.”
