Only Ghosts in the Waves

Alexander Tank & Tobias Scharnagl
Switzerland | 2025 | 68 min
World premiere
Language : Italian
Subtitles : English, French

Enrico Naso is an undertaker in Lampedusa. Constantly confronted with the death that lurks everywhere on this remote rock in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Enrico has chosen life, immersing us in what it means to be human. Against the grain of images and media coverage, he turns to everyday gestures, faith, songs, and the waves to preserve his humanity.

Enrico Naso is a man of faith. But he is also a man of flesh and blood—of emotion, anger, and quiet indignation. Tattooed on his forearm are the words “the unbearable lightness of being : a kind of compass guiding him through life. In this documentary, filmmakers Alexander Tank and Tobias Scharnagl draw close to Enrico, capturing him in all his complexity and contradiction. They observe his gestures, the depth of his gaze, his silences, his connection to those around him. They capture his tears, and the images that continue to haunt him. When Enrico became an undertaker, he never imagined that his island, Lampedusa, would become both infamous and overexposed: the graveyard of the Mediterranean. And yet, life goes on. The youth play football. The men repair boats. This is a portrait of life, even as death lingers on every horizon. A portrait of a man, haunted by ghosts, quietly asking himself, and us, what it truly means to remain human.
Anne Delseth

Tobias Scharnagl
Only Ghosts in the Waves, 2025

Alexander Tank
Only Ghosts in the Waves, 2025
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