Matilde, Cencio, Fulvio and Mario form a family in the circus where they work as ‘freaks’ in 1943 Nazi-occupied Rome. Israel, the owner and putative father, disappears in an attempt to find an escape route overseas for them all. The four friends are in disarray. Without anyone looking after them but, above all, without the circus, they loose their womb and feel lost as rudderless sideshow attractions in a city at war.
Here is a film that, with tenderness, empathy and love, tells the story, from the inside, of the man and the sportsman that was the legendary Marco Pantani, “the pirate”. His mother called it the “first real film about Marco”: and we are particularly proud of it.
Through public and private archive material and intimate, moving conversations with family members, his coach and close friends, “The Natural” retraces the life of a great cyclist against the backdrop of his home town of Cesenatico, a small town overlooking the Adriatic Sea, a town with the warmth to never stop believing that “someone like him would ever give in”.
This is a portrait that restores vitality and dignity to an iconic figure that has been trampled on.
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Barcelona, Spain