Lucia Festival \ Events

This documentary tells the story of a former asylum and its place: a small town nestled in the hills of southern Italy, called Girifalco.

Founded in 1881, the psychiatric hospital and townspeople long progressed in symbiosis.
With the initiation of “open doors” practices as soon as the early 1900s, patients deemed less serious went freely on village streets.

Madness and normality melded in a peculiar blend that over the centuries, brought national and international notoriety to Girifalco, as the town of the insane. More rudely, “Crazy Town”.
Local people, far from experiencing the label as a stigma, took pride in their identity.

But what happens to that town when the asylum closes and the “crazies” leave?
Is a madman still mad even without that name?
Or what are we when we’re no longer called by the name we know so well?