The film

FONDENTE is a 2025 short film directed by Tano Lenzo, following Lena and Paola, two roommates living away from home and connected by a complex, undefined relationship. Their daily life is shaped by complicity, silences, smiles, and tension. As an unspoken truth begins to surface, their relationship moves toward an emotional confrontation.

It is a story about unspoken love and self-acceptance — and, quietly, a portrait of a generation leaving home: the film grew out of the experience of young Sicilian artists building a creative life away from where they were born, made with a Messina-based crew.

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Cinematography

Director of Photography

Francesco La Rosa

Camera

Francesco La Rosa

For FONDENTE, Francesco La Rosa served as Director of Photography and Camera Operator. The visual language is built around handheld movement, calibrated contrast, and a deliberately controlled color palette, allowing the image to follow the characters’ emotional instability while remaining intimate and precise.

The camera was worked handheld throughout — its unstable, mobile quality reflects emotional turbulence and fragility rather than technical looseness. That photography works in close relationship with Tano Lenzo’s direction: controlled contrast and a deliberate palette support the film’s intimate tone, making the characters’ inner states visible without over-explaining them.

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Visual language

FONDENTE adopts a deliberately nonlinear and layered narrative structure. Its handheld camera moves with an unstable but purposeful energy, reflecting the emotional uncertainty at the center of Lena and Paola’s relationship. Calibrated contrast and a controlled palette create a visual language that remains intimate, mobile, and unresolved.

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