THE FIFTH SUN

Is travelling a form of vagrancy, or is it more of an inner journey that completes you, when you finally reach the end of the road?

 

This is one of the questions that directors pondered, deciding to follow Finnish traveler and former fire-fighter Panu in a road trip from Finland to Australia.

 

The Fifth Sun is a glimpse into a lifestyle where your whole life fits into a backpack, trying to make you consider your own ideas about freedom.

CRISTIANA PECCI & MATTEO MAGGI

 

Matteo and Cristiana are an Italian directors duo. Both from Italy have been working for a decade in the European TV Industry under the company’s name 'Coldfocus’.

 

Their background is very diverse: while Cristiana has been drawing her attention on documentaries, Matteo used to be more focusing on Action Sport Filmmaking.

 

The merging of these interests has led Coldfocus to be nowadays an international video production well-established in branding and storytelling.

There are may travel documentaries about how many about the Traveller?

 

When we decided to film a documentary on Wanderlust, following Panu in a part of his endless journey, we didn’t know what the "rejection of rules", that mark the choices of those characters, actually meant.

 

We started following our main character on his journey aligning the project with his lifestyle. Wanderlust refers to the desire to wander and explore the world, be free and feel like a stranger.

 

Recent scientific studies have linked to a gene in our DNA, the Wanderlust, this perpetual desire to travel. The gene called DRD4-7R, which is associated with dopamine levels in the brain, has renamed the “Wanderlust gene”, due to its correlation with great levels of curiosity and restlessness. This restlessness can cause people to take bigger risks which includes exploring new or different places. The gene is not present in everybody: only 20% of the population seems to have it and it's more common in regions where past and history have pushed peoples to migrate.

 

This discovery would open the hypothesis of the existence of "common traits" in people consumed by wanderlust. We filmed two months and a half without any interview, 24/7, trying to show Panu's life as in a movie. His ability to make the camera disappear, thanks to his extreme naturalness, made possible to make us invisible even in front of the people who were being filmed with him. In order to have information about his moods and the state of the journey, sometimes we have asked him to speak out loudly about his thoughts.

• DocPoint, Finland 2018

DOKer 2018 — Main Competition