Nino Pezzella's first work Zum Briefkasten already contains the main themes that would go on to characterise the entire artistic development of this German-based Italian painter/director. The formal methods employed by Pezzella to express his obsessions and emotions in images show, in this debut, their rawest aspect, yet it is precisely because of this that they bring onto the screen an aesthetic surplus of an authenticity and a miraculous immediacy. Frankfurt-am-Main, end of the 80's of the last millennium: Zum Briefkasten (The Postbox) is a greasy-spoon cafe run by an Italian near the central station and the post office. The run-down café (illustrated by Pezzella's camera with stoical pietas) is the microcosm of a multiethnic community. Nino Pezzella's cinema can be seen to be a happy fusion of the documents of the lives of anonymous people and autonomous aesthetic creation right from this, his first film.

Gaetano Biccari