Luca Buvoli’s parents reflect on their experiences in Italy during World War II, the footage bookending and introducing the themes of this video. Dreamlike hand-drawn animation and computer-modeled three-dimensional shapes mix and morph into one another: a human body becomes an airplane— a symbol of Fascist pride—and then a cross. The plane’s vapor trail becomes a spiral and a helix, alluding to a tailspin. Words transform, too—“fascinating, fashion, Fascist, flying”—suggesting a linguistic slipperiness exploited in propaganda.

Eventually the airplane outruns gravity, symbolically detaching from its cultural and historical associations. Its background smoothes out into an easy-to-read linear language akin to that of early radar screens. The sparse soundtrack gives way to children singing a giddy military anthem: “About the Navy we do not care / Because we’ll bomb them from high up in the air . . . This is the pilot’s beautiful life.” Buvoli warns that abstraction carries the dangerous potential to obscure reality.