Private Project

La riga in mezzo (The Center Parting)

Tudor lives trapped in a protocol of alarms and millimeters: the same surgical precision he applies to the walls of a construction site, he demands every morning while parting his daughter Sara’s hair down the middle.

When the chance to reignite a suffocated passion puts him to the test, Tudor chooses duty. But as he sees in Sara the same grey stillness of the walls he paints, Tudor realizes that his search for stability has become a cage. To save her, he must find the courage to break his own impeccable symmetry.

  • Martin Basile
    Director
  • Martin Basile
    Writer
  • Irina Turcanu
    Writer
  • Dario Martinelli
    Writer
  • Martin Basile
    Producer
  • Vittorio Saldutti
    Key Cast
    "Tudor"
  • Elizaveta Lakhatkina
    Key Cast
    "Sara"
  • Martin Basile
    Cinematographer
  • Martin Basile
    Editor
  • Dario Martinelli
    Composer
  • Carlo Parente
    Assistant Director
  • Michele Cornacchia
    Script Supervisor
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    La riga in mezzo
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    15 minutes
  • Production Budget:
    1,800 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    Italian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    21:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Martin Basile

Martin Basile (1992) is an award-winning director, screenwriter, and composer whose work investigates the conflict between structures of rational control and the impact of individual expression.

His cinema rejects objectivity, imposing rigid formal constraints to render a dominant subjectivity, often isolating protagonists within precise framing geometries.

A long-time collaborator of writer and philosopher Irina Turcanu, Basile develops works that explore the exact moment when human protocol collapses under the weight of desire.

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Director Statement

My cinema does not observe characters: it imposes their own obsessions upon itself. In "The Middle Part", the camera does not seek balance; it submits to Tudor’s worldview. I chose to systematically relegate him to the corner of the frame to visually translate his condition: a man who has self-isolated within a productive function, reducing his vital space to a sequence of deadlines and millimeters.

Tudor is a battlefield between the rational rigidity of his profession and an expressive instinct he has tried to plaster over like a crack in a wall. His protocol, from the timed alarms to the millimetric part he combs into his daughter’s hair, is a defense mechanism against the terror of losing control. I wanted to capture the moment this structure gives way. I am not interested in healing, but in the crash of Tudor’s system when he realizes that his discipline is depriving Sara of any possibility of deviation, of color, of life.

"The Middle Part" exists to show what remains of a man when duty stops being a shield and becomes a prison, and the only way out is the courage to finally stain the white of the wall.