A seaside hotel in the off-season. Those who come here have their own reasons: some to forget the past, others to uncover buried secrets. Elderly men who once belonged to the Calabrian mafia hide away here from their bloodstained pasts and await death. Meanwhile, Nicola has come from Mexico in search of his father. Why did his father force him to take part in a bloody act when he was only eleven, only to abandon him afterward? In this intense, remarkable feature debut, director Ernesto Maria Censori explores how violence transcends a single family’s tragedy and is passed down through generations in the forms of memory, blood ties, and culture. To break free from the cycle of violence and reclaim his own life, Nicola must now confront his father’s shadow, which has loomed over his entire life. To those burdened with their own sins, the sea seems to whisper of forgiveness. Can the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean truly wash away the blood of days gone by?
He began his career working on film sets in the directing department, went on to win Best Film at Rome for his short Il Passaggio (2016) through the 48 Hour Film Project, and received the Best Screenplay award in the HP Master of Short Film Competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for the co-written short Feel Like Sharing? (2017). From 2017 to 2019, he studied directing at Rome′s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, where he made eight shorts, a documentary, and three music videos; his short Red Paint (2019), made in collaboration with Campari, premiered at the Campari Lounge on the Venice Lido during the 2020 Venice International Film Festival. After serving as a directing intern on Daniele Luchetti′s Lacci (2020), he drew wider attention with the short Ninnaò (2020), which won awards at numerous festivals in Italy and abroad. His feature debut, Deep Blue, brings together the directorial skill he built across shorts and documentaries into his first full-length work.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
