Juggernaut: discovering Tuscany and Liguria along the less known routes

Juggernaut (2023, 20 minutes) is the name of the dark fantasy short directed by the brothers Emanuele and Daniele Ricci, starring Eugenio Krilov (face of the Rai fiction “La Porta Rossa”, third season), in the role of a timeless knight who undertakes a tiring journey to get back something he lost. Adriana Papana and Nicolò Cerreti are also in the cast. The real protagonists of the short, however, are the breathtaking and little-known places which form the setting for this adventure with Tolkien-like tones: caves and centuries-old trees, towers and precipices, crypts and abandoned mines. A succession of suggestive and fascinating locations, little known to visitors, if not forgotten and dilapidated, but which make Tuscany and Liguria unique, beyond the more famous tourist destinations. Unknown places that deserve to be rediscovered and valued and that today Juggernaut aims to make known to a international audience thanks to its participation in numerous festivals.

“With a limited budget, we tried to make the most and with all the creativity possible i beautiful views, both natural and built by man over the centuries, which can be found in Tuscany and Liguria. The location scouting phase was an adventure that led us to visit ancient crypts, damp caves, Etruscan quarries, centuries-old trees. Our country, and in particular the Tuscany region, offers an enviable variety of scenarios, places such as the crypt of Giugnano, the Vie Cave of Sorano, the Quercia delle Streghe, the Casentino forests, to name a few. One of the goals we set ourselves was to try to enhance them in an international overview”, explain the authors.

An image from the short film

Starting with the impressive Witches Oak, also called Oak of Pinocchio. In fact, it is said that the puppet, created from Collodi’s imagination, was hanged on these very branches by the assassins who wanted to steal his four gold coins, and that he later met the Cat and the Fox nearby. Recognized as a monumental tree in Italy, more than twenty-five meters tall and with a trunk over four meters wide, the tree is found in Gragnano, a hamlet of Capannori, in the province of Lucca, and owes its name to the legend according to which witches kept their sabbaths right above the branches, particularly extended.

An image from the short film

The short also features stunning images of the unknown Crypt of Giugnano, an early Romanesque jewel, the only surviving part of a much larger monastery. In Roccastrada, in the province of Grosseto, the Crypt, which stands on private land in the shade of a holm oak forest, will soon be restored thanks to the intervention of the Tuscany Region which allocated 150 thousand euros just a few months ago for making it safe . Giugnano could therefore become the driving force for medieval architecture tourism in the heart of the Maremma.

Daniele and Emanuele Ricci

You have to climb a little north, up to lower Liguria, to reach another top location of Juggernaut: the Grotto of Bocca Lupara, a suggestive, magical and hidden place, half an hour’s drive from Riomaggiore, the southernmost of the Cinque Terre. Here, a path signaled by the Cai leads to the discovery of the ancient wash houses at the foot of the cave, a place of not only naturalistic but also historical value, because it was used by civilians as an anti-bomb shelter during the Second World War, traces of which can still be found in the electricity cables.

An image from the short film

Again of caves, but this time artificial, we talk about another creepy set of the short film by Red Planet Video Production: the Buca della Vena mine of Cardoso, in the Municipality of Stazzema, in the province of Lucca. An abandoned industrial site, but which, in the seventies of the last century, came to the fore worldwide for the discovery of two new unique minerals never seen before, renamed, by those who discovered them, Apuanite, in honor of the Apuan Alps on which it stands the mine, and Versiliaite, a tribute to the coast below.

Adriana Papana

Going further south, to Vicopisano, in the province of Pisa, we discover the Upezzinghi Tower, reachable with a very suggestive route that winds through the olive groves. Overlooking a precipice, the tower, now abandoned, is the nineteenth-century copy of a much older tower, known as Caprona, which once stood there, in which Dante Alighieri himself participated on horseback in 1289.

An image from the short film

But it doesn’t end there. Juggernaut gives us incredible glimpses of pure cave di Sorano, a location so spectacular that it was also chosen by Matteo Garrone for his fantastic film “The Tale of Tales” (2015), with Salma Hayek and Vincent Cassel. Located within the Città del Tufo Archaeological Park, the quarries appear as large roads dug into the tufa hills, which lead to the discovery of the Etruscan necropolis. Among the most suggestive, admirable even in the short film, the Via Cava di San Sebastiano, with its 25 meter high walls, which crosses the surrounding woods in a fascinating itinerary.

Last on this list, but not least, another exceptional location, also chosen by Leonardo Pieraccioni, another Tuscan director, for the film that made him famous almost thirty years ago, “The Cyclone” (1996). Let’s talk about Foreste Casentinesi National Parkon the Tuscan-Romagnolo Apennines, a real treasure chest that encloses woods, hermitages, lakes and waterfalls, such as that of Acquacheta.

With summer just around the corner, you’ll be spoiled for choice in discovering these treasures outside the city, waiting to see them immersed in the fantastic and gloomy atmosphere of Juggernaut.