Author's judgement: 
Difficult to find a film genre where to insert “The prophecy of the armadillo”, directed by newcomer Emanuele Scaringi, with two excellent actors such as the young Simone Liberati and Pietro Castellitto. The story is taken from one of the well-known cartoonist's works (although the definition seems narrow) Zerocalcare, pseudonym of Michele Rech, and reports the vicissitudes of a young Roman graphic designer grappling with the professional and existential problems of his generation and the metropolitan social contexts in which he lives.
How to classify, how to synthesize a cinematographic work that exhibits rare goods such as visual and content creativity, a screenplay albeit fragmented but effective, a "comic book" subject, a graphic novel, poured onto the big screen? A consolidated genre is that of cinema-comics or vice versa which, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, is very successful (see Disney). In Italy, on the other hand, few experiences: among the most fortunate that of Milo Manara, while great titles such as Tex Willer, Dylan Dog as well as Alan Ford have not had the success they deserve.
With regard to "The prophecy of the armadillo”, let's say right away that if you weren't born in Rome, if you don't grasp the dialect and the meaning of the jokes, as well as the dislocation of the central and peripheral districts, it is difficult to grasp the soul, the essence of the film, which rests a good part of its interest on the dialogues, sometimes hilarious, other times of deep and intense philosophy and spirituality. In fact, how can you understand a joke like "from Rebibbia let's colonize Rome North" if you don't know and understand that Rebibbia is not only the well-known Roman prison but also a neighborhood with an adjoining Metro stop and that "Rome North" is a virtual geographical territory but above all a social, cultural context that deeply divides the city? As far as language is concerned, it is the same difficulty that one may have, for example, when seeing Gomorrah, which however did not affect the extent of the success it achieved.
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The story is simple: Zero finds himself in the typical difficulties of a generation grappling with work, their identity and life spent on the outskirts of the great metropolis. The news arrives of the death of a dear friend of his and, on this track, all the depth and intensity of the reflections of him and of the armadillo that accompanies him are revealed. The film flows at times, often discontinuous with each other, which make his interpretation complex. Some sequences alone deserve the cost of the ticket: the dialogues between Zero and his mother (the always good Laura Morante) are to be remembered, as well as Adriano Panatta's monologue and his "pouf...pouf" which has gone viral on the net. Even the direction appears different from what we have recently seen in other Italian films: lighter, more dynamic, as attentive to close-ups as to wide shots of urban landscapes (perhaps the excessive use of drones).
The film of Zerocalcare (presented in competition at the recent Venice Film Festival) has been defined as "the manifesto of the cut-off generation" and the author himself has expressed an ambiguous position on the authorship of the film adaptation: "I hope the film is as beautiful as all those who are love that story. And I know that whoever worked there is good and regular”. We can confirm: the film is beautiful, we don't know how much it corresponds to the text or the original plates of the 2011 volume, and as far as we know it reports well not only the difficulties, but also the tragedies of the "cut off" generations.
