Tito e gli alieni (2017)

A Neapolitan scientist lives isolated from the world in a village of 54 people in the Nevada desert, among farmers and cowboys, next to Area 51. He is supposed to be working on a secret project for the United States government; in reality, he spends his days on a sofa, listening to the sounds of space in search of a voice impossible to forget: that of his wife, who died several years earlier. Grieving takes time, and the Professor has made his pain chronic by listening every night to the same message recorded on an answering machine. His only contact with the world is Stella, a young woman who organizes weddings for tourists hunting for aliens. A parcel and a video recording announce that two young relatives are coming from Naples: Anita and Tito, whom his brother Fidel entrusts to him before dying. The two children upend the Professor’s solitary existence, and he literally gets himself equipped to welcome them. Anita is 16 and dreams of taking a dip in a swimming pool with Lady Gaga; Tito is 7 and, more than anything, wants to speak to his father again. The children expect Las Vegas; instead, they find themselves in the middle of nowhere, in the hands of an eccentric uncle, in a strange and mysterious place where people say aliens live. Sources of new energy, Anita and Tito will restart the project the Professor abandoned, and thanks to them he will become active again and start living once more. The result is a surprising, surreal event that brings the film to a positive close.