Paolo Natale Explores Male Bodies and Eating Disorders in Hybrid Documentary Our Raised Skin
- Director Paolo Natale’s experimental hybrid documentary and video-essay, “Our Raised Skin” (“Nuestra Piel Levantada”), is currently in advanced development through the Madrid Film School (ECAM) incubator program.
- In an interview with Variety, Natale explained that the film examines the transition from childhood to patriarchal behavior.
- “The film reflects on and questions self-perception, asking at what point in childhood we go from being children to patriarchal men,” Natale told Variety.
Director Paolo Natale’s experimental hybrid documentary and video-essay, “Our Raised Skin” (“Nuestra Piel Levantada”), is currently in advanced development through the Madrid Film School (ECAM) incubator program. Selected as one of five projects for La Incubadora’s ninth edition, the project explores the complex relationships of power and violence within families and questions male self-perception from childhood.
Exploring Male Body Dynamics and Emotional Hunger
In an interview with Variety, Natale explained that the film examines the transition from childhood to patriarchal behavior. Although the film is not directly autobiographical, the director draws from shared personal history regarding a compulsive eating disorder that affected him, his father, and his grandfather.
“The film reflects on and questions self-perception, asking at what point in childhood we go from being children to patriarchal men,” Natale told Variety.
Natale noted that he struggled with an emotional problem managed through food from an early age, though he lacked the words to describe it until he was 23 years old. He observed a pattern passed down through male family figures of managing emotions through eating, leading to internalized shame and guilt that often delays diagnoses among men.
“All men are taught that they must achieve a certain physique in order to exert power over others — a strong body with which to capitalize on everything,” Natale said. “However, emotional hunger or binge-eating disorders are different. Softness and flaccidity are frowned upon, and there is still a great deal of silence surrounding these issues among men.”
Production Plans and Funding Status
The project is produced by Manuela Gutiérrez Arrieta, Juan Carlos Ballesteros, Nabil Ejey, and Mubox Studio. Gutiérrez Arrieta and Natale studied together at ECAM and have already secured development funding from the Region of Murcia and La 7, Murcia’s regional television channel.
Production team members are actively seeking additional funding sources across Spain and Italy, given Natale’s Italian heritage. The filmmakers plan to shoot at least portions of “Our Raised Skin” in the summer of 2027.
A Cinematic Approach to Political Aesthetics
Opting for a documentary-style approach rather than a traditional narrative feature, Natale aims to create an unsettling project that explores formal, aesthetic, and narrative layers. He expressed a desire to challenge conventional standards of cinematic representation.
“I am someone who is quite concerned about the issue of representation, cinematic formats and their use,” Natale said in the Variety interview. “I am a little tired of canonically beautiful, sharply defined images, of that sense of neatness. What does an image need to have to be considered cinematic?”