Experiencing Interruptions?

Under the Lawn

“UNDER THE LAWN” is a surreal short film set in the heart of the American suburbs, where beauty and emptiness coexist beneath a perfect surface. Blending the cold, cinematic stillness of Gregory Crewdson with the nostalgic warmth of Norman Rockwell, the film drifts through houses, basements, and lawns that breathe with alternating blue and golden light.

Inside this world, families repeat gestures frozen in time, television screens hum like living organs, and the ground below hides a second suburb — painted, idealized, and decaying.

“UNDER THE LAWN” is a visual descent into the hidden memory of America — a place where perfection flickers, illusion rots from within, and the dream never truly ends.

  • Massimo Scognamiglio
    Director
  • Massimo Scognamiglio
    Writer
  • Massimo Scognamiglio
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Experimental
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 6 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 3, 2025
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Language:
    English
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Massimo Scognamiglio

Born in Rome, he lives and works in Rome.
Artist, photographer, and digital evangelist, he paints, photographs, and has been exhibiting since the mid-’90s. From 2006 he lived for two years in California, then for a brief period he moved to Paris where he paints, photographs, designs performances, his most famous Rebirth, which took place in 2016 at Place de la République. Today, he lives and works in Rome, in his studio-house-gallery known as Le Petit Atelier.
He has exhibited at the MACRO Museum Asylum in Rome, with the project “Where is the future?”, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, also in Rome, with the exhibition “The Shining Consciousness”, moreover he has entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Vibo Valentia LIMEN ; in addition to other galleries in Italy and abroad.
Massimo Scognamiglio stands as a poignant figure in the landscape of contemporary art, his works a testament to the profound layers of human introspection. Without resorting to hyperbole, it is evident that his art delves into the crevices of mental unease while simultaneously radiating a palpable life force. Scognamiglio’s oeuvre is a journey through the psyche, with series like “Gli Strappi” (1998-2004) which laid bare the raw edges of human emotion, and “Ciclo delle Stanze” (2008-today), where each room becomes a chapter of an introspective narrative.
In 2023 and 2022 he enters the five finalists of the prestigious Exibart Prize.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Under the Lawn was born from an obsession with what hides beneath the surface, beneath the grass, beneath appearances, beneath the idea of happiness itself.
I wanted to explore the American suburb as a metaphor for denial: a place where perfection becomes pathology, where light conceals more than it reveals.

The film moves between two visual languages, Gregory Crewdson’s suspended realism and Norman Rockwell’s painted optimism, until they collapse into one another. In that collision, warmth turns to fluorescence, nostalgia becomes surveillance, and the familiar becomes alien.

It’s not a story about people, but about the ghost of a society still replaying its own myths. Every gesture is remembered, repeated, consumed.
Under the Lawn is my way of asking what remains after the image, what still breathes under the polished surface of collective dreams.