Hi Reader

a few months ago I discovered I was adopted, so a few weeks ago I went to Berlin to meet my real parents.

Just kidding :)

I was in Berlin to attend a workshop and I discovered something enlightening while working on the screenplay for Anno Zero.

Solace 23 is a workshop led by Franz Rodenkirchen and Françoise von Roy. For three days I sat in a circle around a large table with them and five other filmmakers from around the world — Malaysia, Brazil, the Netherlands — and we shared our stories. When it was my turn, I told them about ravers living in Cold War bunkers after the world has collapsed, trying to build a community, having to choose between individualism and the collective.

Franz listened, waited, and then said something very simple: "Climate change is too vast a subject to be solved by a film."

I felt like an idiot. And free.

When I started writing Anno Zero I wanted to talk about greed and capitalism, about how these led to the climate crisis. I had a clear message, almost a manifesto: here's what we need to learn. So Anno Zero had become a film with an ending that showed we can do things differently. It was dramaturgically correct. It followed the rules: protagonist's arc, three-act structure, clear theme, final catharsis. Everything looked good on paper.

But was that what I really wanted to do? No.

I was writing a didactic film. I was preaching. I had applied schemes and methodologies learned from studying screenwriting, and without realizing it these rules had caged the creative process. I had started from a thesis and was building a story to prove it. Like an essay disguised as a film. Mechanical. Banal. Disconnected from what had driven me to tell this story in the first place.

What I understood in Berlin is that I need to stay connected to the instinct that led me to want to tell this story, to the elements I feel intimately and sometimes unconsciously connected to. The climate crisis — and its causes — had to become the context, not the problem to solve or the thesis to prove. That I had to leave my character at the end without knowing what awaits him. That I had to leave the audience with a sense of urgency — not with a lesson.

I changed everything. I removed the reassuring ending. I removed the character who "figures it out." I removed the antagonist who embodied the evil to fight. I removed the thesis. What remained is the story of a man — not a message — who must choose whether to stay or leave, without knowing what awaits him outside. And it became more true. More authentic.

Because the truth is I don't know what awaits us. You don't know. And pretending to know it in a film would have been pretentious.

Now Anno Zero is no longer a film about capitalism or the climate crisis. It's a film about a man living with the consequences of something he can't control, and must decide what it means to be alive in a world that's ending. Yes, that world also ended because of greed and economic choices. But that's the premise, not the story. The story is about a person. And I don't know how it will end. And that's okay. In fact, it's the only honest thing I can do.

Solace 23 has existed for 11 years, has trained over 300 filmmakers from more than 50 countries, and over 50 films have been made and presented at international festivals. But the most valuable thing wasn't learning new screenwriting techniques. It was finding a safe space to work in direct contact with a group of authors.

I needed someone to give me permission not to have the answers and to remind me that my responsibility isn't to solve the world — it's to tell the truth of how I feel as I watch it change.

If you want to know more about Solace 23, you can find all the info here: Solace23.

And if this newsletter brought something to mind, or if you simply want to continue the conversation, write to me. I'd love to hear from you.

Marco