Mangī: Persian 1403

A “no man’s land” squeezed between an airport and a landfill; toxic emanations float in the sky, and everything is shrouded in fog in the morning. This is where the protagonist of Sturdimento lives. During the day, he works at the slaughterhouse for a miserable penny, a convict among animals condemned to death. Yet something keeps him from leaving. Perhaps his old grandmother, for whom he steals tripe and sweetbreads, hiding them in her underwear and defending them from packs of hungry dogs, or the friendship of Bortch, his workmate and confidant. After all, since he was a child, he has learned to transform the depressing reality surrounding him into something wonderful, to see a clear spring in a polluted stream, or exotic places in piles of waste and purification tanks... And he is fond of his memories, even if they "resemble tarred birds". With a light writing, pervaded by a formidable black humor, Egloff immerses us in a sordid and miserable environment, and at the same time makes us emerge from it by chiseling a parallel world that is surreal and full of grace, ultimately leaving us with a pinch of nostalgia, a drop of bitterness and a hint of hope.