Paolo Natale's 'Our Raised Skin' Takes Shape at ECAM's Incubator

Director Paolo Natale's experimental hybrid documentary "Our Raised Skin" ("Nuestra Piel Levantada") is in advanced development at Madrid Film School (ECAM), one of five projects selected for the ninth edition of La Incubadora, the school's incubator program.

"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 says the film is not autobiographical, but it draws on a hard fact: he, his father and his grandfather all suffered from the same compulsive eating disorder. Manuela Gutiérrez Arrieta, Juan Carlos Ballesteros, Nabil Ejey and Mubox Studio produce. 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. The team is pursuing further funding in Spain and in Italy, where Natale is from, and plans to shoot at least parts of the film in the summer of 2027.

The project examines male bodies and what Natale calls the fear of their touch. "This film is written from a very specific and precise observation of the dynamics that drive relationships of power and violence against bodies within the family, but drawing on reality is just one further layer, and I believe the project straddles the line between situational portrayal and theatrical staging," he says.

Natale traces the disorder back through the men in his family. "I've always been aware, ever since my childhood, that I had a problem with food. Or rather, an emotional problem that was managed through food and, consequently, a sense of the violence directed at obese bodies and all that this entails in various spheres," he says. "I didn't know how to put this into words until I was 23. I gradually realized that there was a pattern, passed down through the male figures in my family via their upbringing. A way of managing emotions that involved food. I've internalized this, just as my father did."

He points to shame as a structural problem in how men's eating disorders are handled. "It's very common for men with eating disorders to feel shame and guilt. This is something that often leads to delayed diagnoses," he says. "We tend to associate bigorexia with 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. 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."

Natale chose a hybrid form over a conventional narrative feature. "I feel more at home with a documentary-style approach, so to speak," he says. "I'm also interested, from a cinematic perspective, in films that manage to navigate different layers and textures, whether on a formal, aesthetic or narrative level. I like films that are unsettling in that sense, and that's what I want to make. I almost always value the risk and the intentions more than the result itself." He aligns himself with what he calls "small, fragile films," works "mistakenly regarded as cinematic exercises, as imperfect films from an industrial point of view," though he concedes "sadly most of us find ourselves swept in the same direction" as standardized funding.

A childhood memory of hearing "orange fat overflowing and flooding everything" anchors the film's central material. "Fat is something that is present in our bodies from the moment we are born until we die. Our fat is political," Natale says. "It is a viscous substance with which we must come to terms. It is also guilt and pain, but above all, for me, it represents life itself. All bodies store fat, no matter how much of a calorie deficit you create. Fat has been present throughout human history."

The director frames the film's visual strategy as a political stance against the hierarchy of images. "I am a little tired of canonically beautiful, sharply defined images, of that sense of neatness," he says. "What does an image need to have to be considered cinematic? What hierarchy lies behind these images?" He argues that "neat digital images and unjustified uses of film reflect a social and class-based hierarchy of images," where high resolution signals power while low resolution signals failure and amateurism.

His answer is deliberate imperfection. "I wish to champion imperfection, placing at the center those images that show signs of fading, blurred and out of focus," he says. "I wish to approach male bodies from a place of acceptance of 'flaw,' thereby eschewing the norms and fetishism of visual capitalism."

If the remaining Spanish and Italian financing comes through, "Our Raised Skin" will bring its blurred, unforgiving close-ups to male bodies before the camera in the summer of 2027.