I would suggest going to see Venice Elsewhere, a disconcerting film by Elia Romanelli shot in diverse locations that have a visual connection to Venice. It’s a moving film that non-judgmentally explores an unusual relationship with reality"
(Philippe del Drago, executive and artistic director The International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA)

"The lagoon city comes back to life in the European collective imagination thanks to a documentary by anthropologist and director Elia Romanelli".
(Vera Mantengoli, La Repubblica)

Venice Elsewhere, following a map of private and intimate stories, seeks to understand how it is possible, today, to tell the story of this city.
Beyond its lagoon: in a world of television images and artificial sensations that perhaps describe it better than the original.
The director, Elia Romanelli, one of the last inhabitants of Venice, travelled to meet the new citizens of an almost extinct city.
Based on evocations and homonyms, he meets people who have decided to dedicate their lives to the city of canals, bridges and Doges, without ever having visited it: a distillate of imagination. Who can understand a city that has almost disappeared better than someone who has never seen it?
It is the Venice of Tassilo, the only inhabitant of Neu Venedig, a small riverside area of Berlin; of a young Turkish married couple who dream of a honeymoon in Venice and, unable to afford it, find a replica version in a mega outlet store on the outskirts of Istanbul; of Marica who, in love since childhood with a black and white photonovel that follows the love affair between a gondolier and a tourist, escaped from the war in Bosnia as an adolescent, finds a job in a container on the outskirts of Zagreb, the hairdressing salon "Venezia"; of two German friends who, working all year round, many hours a day, on their masks and costumes, recreate the Venetian carnival in a village in southern Germany; and of a shepherd and a butcher, proud citizens of Venetia, in the heart of Transylvania.
It is the Venice that Italo Calvino, in the Invisible Cities, each time with a different example and metaphor, tries to tell Kublai Khan, how it is an ideal and impossible place at the same time.
A documentary about a city that allows us to talk about imagination, architecture, town planning, art and citizenship. A documentary on identity in a time of uncertainty about borders, when listening to the life stories of people unknown to us can be a clue to understanding. And if not a clue, a valid doubt.

With a question: is it better to photograph a city or to live it?