Personal project · Messina
Film · DJ set · Santuario di Cristo Re · 2025
Visuals by Francesco La Rosa · Music by Marco Ursino
A forty-eight-minute DJ set by Marco Ursino, filmed at sunrise on the terrace of the Santuario di Cristo Re — the hill above the harbour, with the Strait and the Calabrian coast behind the decks. Two people from Messina, one morning, and a single idea: show the city the way the people who live in it actually see it, not the way a postcard does.
The film moves from the landmarks everyone photographs to the corners nobody does, and back. It was made with filming permits granted by the Comune di Messina, published on 22 September 2025, and the municipality announced it the following day as the first step in making the city a stage for productions that reach beyond it.
Sunrise over the Strait lasts about twenty usable minutes. The set is longer than that, so the film could not simply wait for the good light and cut around it — it had to be built so that the light changing is the structure: the port waking up, the ferries starting to move, the colour going from grey to gold to plain daylight while the music keeps its own time. That is the reason the whole thing is one location and one morning rather than a montage of the city.
The release was announced by the City of Messina on its official site and picked up by the local press the same week. These are editorial mentions, quoted here as they appeared; none of them is a client.
For cities, festivals, venues and cultural bodies that want a film about a place rather than an advert for it. One location, real light, and the time it takes.
Related: Saints Music Atelier, the other Messina music project on this site, and ATM Messina, filmed for the city's own transport company.