Like Heaven Without God
Date:
January 9, 2023
Like Heaven Without God
Like Heaven Without God
by Luca Capponi
Onira | Netherlands
Wild Rocket | Italy
1st feature
Looking for
Logline
Five residents of an improvised RV community find temporary refuge inside a parking lot of Berkeley, California.
Synopsis
Residents of an RV community find temporary refuge from harsh street life in a parking lot of Berkeley, California.
Dale is a sixty-year-old Oakland native with terminal cancer. Despite his medical condition, he is making plans to leave for Oregon and toils everyday to repair his RV.
Luis is a 70-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico who has been living in the Bay Area for almost 30 years. His deep and reflective personality have earned him the nickname of “Poet”.
Melissa is in her late sixties and has delicate features with soft blue eyes. She suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which has led directly to her chronic homelessness.
Next door, there are Andrew and his father David, who suffers from dementia. Andrew has sworn off drugs and checked into rehab, but getting help in a facility would mean leaving his dad alone.
Amber, once a candidate for the Albany City Council, is a skilled mechanic and the trustworthy spokeswoman of the RV community.
In the confines of the parking lot, moments of joy and darkness intertwine – life is constantly at stake here. And as the program that hosts them is set to expire, the community might be forced to move out of the space it has called home for over two years.
Director’s Profile
Luca is an Italian-Ecuadorian filmmaker, born and raised in a small town in the province of Bergamo. In 2015, he graduated from the University of Bologna with a Master’s degree in Cinema and Multimedia Production, during which he began creating his first videos and organizing cultural events focused on Human Rights and Art-House Cinema.
In 2016, he enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Palermo, specializing in documentary filmmaking. During this time, he concentrated on migration stories, traveling from the Balkans to the Mediterranean Sea. In 2018, he participated in the nomadic biennial Manifesta 12, collaborating with artists such as Jelili Atiku, Marinella Senatore, Uriel Orlow, and Laura Poitras. On that occasion he directed the short film ‘Chronicles from Dusk’ presented at the Critics’ Week of the Venice Film Festival, which was subsequently screened at various international festivals.
In 2019, he began working for the film production company Arbash, led by director Pasquale Scimeca. With Scimeca, he co-directed his first feature-length documentary, ‘Il pranzo di Francesco’, which premiered at the 2021 Torino Film Festival and was later acquired by RAI Cinema.
He currently lives in Berkeley, California, where he works as an independent filmmaker.
Company Profile
ONIRA – Onira is an independent film production company dedicated to developing thought-provoking artistic voices that present meaningful topics with international appeal. Founded by Filippo Schiaffino and Rodolfo L. Mase Dari, the company focuses on early development and production, with Filippo bringing years of experience as a Production Executive at Groenlandia, a leading Italian studio known for award-winning films and TV series produced in collaboration with global platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and Sky.
Among Onira’s recent projects are the VR documentary Nexus (featured at Venice Biennale College VR, Cannes XR, and UN COP26), the short film Playing God (Venice International Critics’ Week 2024), and the feature documentary Like Heaven Without God (IDFA Forum, in post-production).
WILDROCKET – Wild Rocket is a production company created by filmmaker Luca Capponi, dedicated to develop and produce cinema-veritè documentaries.