AENIGMA EST (GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, VOLOS 1888 - ROME 1978)

An imaginary train journey starts out from the town of Volos, in 1888, and having run the course of a human life, "returns" to Thessaly 90 years later, only to dissappear into the tunnel that leads to the mythical pantheon of Olympus. "Homeland?" Volos -giorgio de Chiricio's native town-, Athens and Munich -thestarting points of his studies-, Florence, Milan, Turin, Paris, Ferrara -all of them birthplaces of new influences in his work that changed the course of Art-, and finally, Rome, the last stop in his journey, all these cities can lay claim, each one in its own way, ton an affirmative answer in response to the obstinate question: "Homeland?"... For de Chricio himself, any immediate affirmation or negation to this, and even more so to the other momentous and inexorable questions of life and art, would constitute the death of the aenigma. Giorgio de Chirico, one of the greatest painters and thinkers of the 20th century, used to condense his metaphysical relationship with the world into one statement/question: "Et quid amabo nisi quod aenigma est?" ("And what should I love, if not the aenigma?") This key-phrase of his lends to the film both its title and the main axis of its dramatization