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Lives on-hold on the edge of an urban sprawl, facing a big change.

A river in the outskirt of an European metropolis, a no man's land where a handful of people try to survive facing a strong urban transformation. Here flows the future, bringing the worry of the unknown together with the hope for a better chance.

City veins is a journey through four consecutive seasons on the banks of a river flowing through a lawless land of alienation. Once mainly agricultural, this area is now mostly covered by scrubs and inhabited by wild birds; one bank is dotted by illegal immigrants’ shacks, the other has become a sort of large open-air drug discount store where addicts and pushers meet. A dilapidated tower, once part of a gravel extraction works, is the only landmark. A freeway bridge, jammed with traffic during the rush hours, allows a comprehensive view.

 A suburban area around which the future of the city will be played out: an important railway project which will connect Torino (Turin, North of Italy) to the rest of Europe and redesigning the landscape to provide citizens with a 9-holes golf course instead of “Tossic Park”, land of drugs. But currently life here still follows nature's rhythms and hasn't yielded to the demands of urbanization. The pace of farming (Gerardo and other unauthorized farmers), seasonal changes in the shacks adapting to different weather conditions (the rom boy Roky and his family, the hermit Reno), and the drug trade in the scrub (the junky Frida and her pushers) are some of the features following the rhythm imposed by the flow of the river. The envisaged time-span of one year will allow us to follow in depth the changes in the characters' lives related to the ongoing evolution in the landscape. The lives of those living on the banks of the river will be shown alternated to the lives of those involved in restoration work, in front of monitors in design studios, surveys and visits to the sites.

CITY VEINS - The future flows through here - the trailer on Vimeo.