Human Capital

Brianza, Christmas Eve.

A worker after ten hours of work rides his bicycle home: he is hit by an SUV and will die within a few days.

Whose suv was it? More importantly, who was driving it?

Two families are involved in this enigma: that of Bernaschi, a wealthy financier, and that of Dino Ossola, a real estate developer.

A film divided into chapters through which it is narrated, with a game of flashbacks, what happened in those days to each of the protagonists of the story.

Between a disappointed wife and a spoiled son, the life and luxurious home of the wealthy financier on the verge of bankruptcy is photographed while the ambitious real estate developer uses his daughter and neglects his pregnant psychologist partner while trying to save an ill-advised investment.

Who will be the real victim in this story? How is the value of our lives considered in economic terms; how is our human capital compensated? Based on earnings, future prospects and affections? And who gets to assess the "surplus value" in economic terms that each person carries? A very simple algorithm used by insurance companies decides how much my "human" capital amounts to... Can life be compensated in terms of earnings? And most importantly, how to calculate affections and future prospects?

A film adaptation of Stephen Amidon's novel of the same name set in Connecticut, the film is the result of a mix of contaminations between film and television. The bar code chosen for the poster is an explicit reference to the market value of humanity made human, too human, to the limits of monstrosity.

Already the fact that man is spoken of as a "capital" or referred to as a "resource" (the so-called "human resources") speaks volumes with regard to the point of view taken today in considering man: not insofar as he is a man, but only as a "means" of production and profit.

The specific weight of each determines the quantity that establishes our value: that of human capital turned inhuman especially where the boundary is not naively safeguarded in the vain hope of a redefinition of it.

As Marx put it, "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their lives, but the conditions of their lives that determine their consciousness...With the placing in value of the world of things grows in direct relation the devaluation of the world of men."

"Humanity that treats the world as a throw-away world also treats itself as a throw-away humanity."

A portrait of an "amateur" human as the film puts it, an actor unable to play his part as a real man.

A film that does not linger, that makes our condition visible and forces deep reflection.