Part I: Counterculture and the End of the American Dream
This first leg of our journey analyzes the seminal works that established the road movie as the genre of choice for dissecting a nation in crisis. These films do not just criticize the American Dream; they stage its death. The road, once a symbol of opportunity and manifest destiny, transforms into a landscape of alienation, violence, and existential angst. The freedom pursued proves to be a self-destructive illusion, a horizon that recedes with every mile traveled.
Easy Rider (1969)
Wyatt and Billy, two motorcyclists, finance their trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans with the proceeds of a drug deal. Crossing the American Southwest on their choppers, they search for a spiritual and free America, but they clash with the intolerance and violence of a society that does not accept their lifestyle. Their journey becomes a tragic testament to the conflict between idealism and reality.
Easy Rider is not just a film; it is the manifesto that ignited the independent road movie. The work of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda defined the countercultural ethos of the genre, staging the dichotomy between the search for an authentic America and its most repressive incarnation. The motorcycle, the ultimate symbol of freedom and independence, also reveals itself as a sign of vulnerability. The tragic irony of the film lies in its narrative engine: the search for freedom is financed by drug trafficking, a corruption intrinsic to the dream itself, and it ends with the murder of the protagonists, punished not for a crime, but for what they represent.
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Bobby Dupea, a former piano prodigy from an upper-class family, works on an oil rig and lives a rough, rootless life. When he learns that his father is dying, he embarks on a journey home to Washington state, bringing his girlfriend Rayette with him. The return to his world of origin forces him to confront the man he has become and the one he chose not to be.
If Easy Rider is a choral epic, Five Easy Pieces is an intimate and devastating psychological portrait. Bobby Dupea’s journey is not an escape towards freedom, but an escape from himself. Bob Rafelson’s film surgically dissects the theme of alienation and class division, showing the protagonist’s inability to find a sense of belonging, either in the working-class world or in the intellectual one of his family. The iconic diner scene, in which Bobby clashes with a waitress over an order, is a microcosm of his rebellion against the arbitrary rules and hypocrisy of a society he cannot tolerate.
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
Two drivers, known only as “the Driver” and “the Mechanic,” cross the United States in a souped-up ’55 Chevrolet, challenging other motorists in clandestine races. During their aimless journey, they pick up a girl and engage in an existential challenge with G.T.O., a middle-aged man behind the wheel of a Pontiac GTO. Their race to Washington D.C. becomes a minimalist odyssey through the empty heart of America.
Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop is the existentialist masterpiece of the genre. With its stark and minimalist approach, the film strips the road movie of all romanticism. Here, the true protagonist is the road itself, an endless ribbon of asphalt that reflects the inner void of the characters, reduced to simple functions: “the Driver,” “the Mechanic.” Unlike Easy Rider, which retains a trace of idealism, Hellman’s work offers a deeper and more desolate critique, suggesting that the journey itself is meaningless, a perpetual motion that leads nowhere, just like the society from which they are trying to escape.
Vanishing Point (1971)
Kowalski, a former police officer and race car driver, must deliver a white 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in less than two days. Fueled by amphetamines, he turns the delivery into a mad race against time and authority, becoming a folk hero thanks to the support of Super Soul, a blind DJ who follows his escape on the radio. His nihilistic rebellion pushes him towards a final and inevitable confrontation.
Vanishing Point is a shot of pure nihilistic adrenaline, a road movie that pushes the accelerator on rebellion to the point of no return. Kowalski is “the last American hero,” a figure of pure speed and momentum, an individual who opposes a surveillance state for no apparent reason other than the assertion of his own existence. The DJ Super Soul acts as a Greek chorus, transforming a police chase into a modern myth. The explosive and inevitable ending is a powerful statement on the dead-end nature of absolute freedom, an act of self-destruction as the ultimate form of self-affirmation.
A vision curated by a filmmaker, not an algorithm
In this video I explain our vision
Badlands (1973)
In 1959, fifteen-year-old Holly Sargis falls in love with Kit Carruthers, a twenty-five-year-old who looks like James Dean. After Kit kills Holly’s father, who opposed their relationship, the two begin a criminal flight across the desolate plains of the Midwest. Their violent odyssey is told through Holly’s voice-over, which describes the events with an almost fairytale-like detachment, creating a jarring contrast with the brutality of their actions.
Terrence Malick’s debut, Badlands, is a lyrical and disturbing work that transfigures the road movie into a dark fable. Holly’s detached narration, imbued with an almost romantic naivety, clashes violently with Kit’s murderous rage. The vast and desolate landscapes of Montana and South Dakota are not just a backdrop, but a visual metaphor for the moral and emotional void of the protagonists. Malick perverts the promise of the American Dream, turning the frontier into a stage for senseless violence, a place where innocence and death dance a macabre waltz.
The Kempinsky method
Drama, by Federico Salsano, Italy 2020.
The introspective imaginary road movie of a man in the maze of his own mind, his memories of his youth, his never dormant passions and contradictory truths. The road is made of water, the destination is falsely unknown. His traveling companions are three mysterious men, projections of his imagination and of different aspects of his personality: the perennial melancholy, the crazy creative, the introverted child. He is also followed by a female presence that tells the umpteenth human story. At a certain point of the crossing he decides to abandon the boat and his ghosts of him diving into the sea and arrives swimming on a deserted beach, naked, with a small Pinocchio puppet closed by a padlock.
Food for thought
Life is like a long sea voyage and the human being is a small creature confronting immensity. Sometimes the ocean is calm, other times there are terrible storms. Sometimes we are captains of a boat with a well-defined route, other times we are shipwrecked in search of a land in which to save ourselves. But despite the long journey and the movement in physical space, there are other questions that resonate in the mind: who are these men I travel with? What is the mystery of this immense mass of water that seems to be made of my memories? You can circumnavigate the whole world but the main question always remains the same: who am I really?
LANGUAGE: italian
SUBTITLES: english, spanish, portuguese, german, french
Part II: European Echoes: Existential, Political, and Surreal Journeys
European directors adopted the American road movie model but reshaped it to reflect their own cultural contexts, philosophical anxieties, and stylistic innovations. They stripped the genre of its specifically “American” mythology to universalize its themes, turning the journey into a tool for diagnosing the ills of their societies, from the euphoria of the Italian economic boom to French political radicalism, to the identity crisis of post-war Germany.
Pierrot le fou (1965)
Ferdinand Griffon, bored with his bourgeois life, runs away with his former lover, Marianne Renoir, after discovering a corpse in her apartment. Pursued by Algerian gangsters, the two embark on a chaotic and violent journey from northern France to the Côte d’Azur. Their escape transforms into an exploration of art, politics, and a love destined for an explosive and desperate conclusion.
With Pierrot le fou, Jean-Luc Godard reinvents the “lovers on the run” narrative with the iconoclastic energy of the Nouvelle Vague. The road trip becomes a vibrant and fragmented canvas on which the director projects his reflections on cinema, war, and the impossibility of love. Through his distinctive techniques, such as jump-cuts and breaking the fourth wall, Godard deconstructs not only the film genre but also the illusions of a romantic escape, showing how every attempt at evasion is destined to collide with the violence of the world and the contradictions of the heart.
Week-end (1967)
A bourgeois Parisian couple, Roland and Corinne, leave for a weekend in the countryside with a plan to kill her parents for the inheritance. Their journey turns into an apocalyptic nightmare, an odyssey through a France on the brink of collapse, marked by monstrous traffic jams, surreal car accidents, gratuitous violence, and encounters with revolutionary figures and cannibals.
Week-end is Godard’s wildest and most apocalyptic road movie, a ferocious satire on the collapse of bourgeois and consumerist society. The famous, endless sequence of the traffic jam is a powerful metaphor for the paralysis of modern civilization. The journey is no longer an escape, but a descent into a surreal hell where social rules dissolve, giving way to class struggle, cannibalism, and the “end of cinema.” It is a terminal work, a cry of rage that announces the end of an era.
Kings of the Road (1976)
Bruno, a technician who repairs film projectors, travels along the border between the two Germanys in his truck. One day, he meets Robert, a man who has just attempted suicide after the end of his marriage. The two men embark on a journey together, visiting dilapidated provincial cinemas and confronting their loneliness, the absence of women, and the influence of American culture on post-war Germany.
Kings of the Road is the contemplative heart of Wim Wenders’ “road trilogy.” The slow and meditative journey of the two protagonists becomes a search for German cultural identity, crushed under the shadow of American influence. The decaying cinemas they visit are powerful symbols of a lost national narrative, of a culture at risk of disappearing. Wenders creates a road movie about the history of images itself, a melancholic elegy for a world that is fading, colonized in its subconscious by Hollywood cinema.
Radio On (1979)
Robert, a London DJ, embarks on a journey to Bristol to investigate the mysterious death of his brother. Driving through a grey and desolate England, his path is marked by a post-punk soundtrack and enigmatic encounters, including a disillusioned soldier and a German immigrant. The journey transforms into an inner exploration of memory, grief, and alienation in a country on the verge of profound change.
Christopher Petit’s work is a uniquely British response to the cinema of Wenders. The stark and evocative black-and-white photography and the soundtrack (featuring tracks by David Bowie, Kraftwerk, and Devo) evoke the desolate and alienated landscape of late 1970s Britain, during the so-called “Winter of Discontent.” Robert’s journey is not an escape, but a melancholic and internal drift through a suspended nation, an investigation into the soul of a country that has lost its direction.
Paris, Texas (1984)
A man, Travis, reappears in the Texas desert after a four-year absence. Mute and suffering from amnesia, he is recovered by his brother Walt, who brings him to Los Angeles and reunites him with his seven-year-old son, Hunter. Together, Travis and Hunter embark on a journey in search of Jane, the boy’s mother and Travis’s great lost love, to piece together the fragments of a painful past.
A masterpiece by Wim Wenders and Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, Paris, Texas is a European’s vision of the American West myth. The vast and desolate landscapes, magnificently photographed by Robby Müller, become a mirror of Travis’s inner state, a man emptied by loss and trauma. This is not a journey through space, but a pilgrimage back in time, an attempt to reconstruct memory and family. The iconic final monologue, an impossible dialogue through a one-way mirror, is the culmination of an emotional journey of rare power.
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)
The Leningrad Cowboys, the self-proclaimed “worst rock’n’roll band in the world,” leave their Siberian tundra to seek their fortune in America. Led by their unscrupulous manager, they cross the United States from New York to New Orleans, and on to Mexico, adapting their repertoire to local music in an attempt to win over audiences. Their journey is a surreal and comedic odyssey through the clichés of American culture.
Aki Kaurismäki’s film is an absurd and laconic comedy that uses the road movie structure to stage an irresistible satire. The deadpan and minimalist humor, a trademark of the Finnish director, dismantles both the commonplaces of American culture and the image of the stoic Nordic man. The journey of the Leningrad Cowboys is an exploration of a mythical America, seen through the bewildered eyes of an unlikely band, highlighting the absurdity and beauty of cultural exchange.
Part III: Minimalism, Alienation, and the Poetry of the Road
This section of our itinerary focuses on a strain of independent American cinema that uses the road movie to explore alienation and existential drift through a minimalist, deadpan, and often poetic aesthetic. For these authors, the road is not a place of dramatic action, but of quiet observation. The journey becomes a canvas on which to paint incommunicability, cultural uprooting, and the silent absurdity of existence.
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Willie, a young Hungarian immigrant living in New York, receives an unexpected visit from his sixteen-year-old cousin Eva, who has just arrived from Budapest. After ten days of forced cohabitation, Eva leaves for Cleveland. A year later, Willie and his friend Eddie decide to visit her, and then drag her on an impromptu trip to Florida. Their journey is a laconic exploration of boredom and uprootedness.
The film that established Jim Jarmusch as one of the masters of American independent cinema. Stranger Than Paradise defines a cool and minimalist aesthetic, based on deadpan humor, black-and-white photography, and a structure composed of long, static shots. The “road trip” to Cleveland and Florida is not a liberating experience, but a lateral shift from one form of boredom to another, perfectly capturing the sense of alienation and cultural foreignness of its protagonists.
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Mike, a narcoleptic hustler, and Scott, the rebellious son of the mayor of Portland, live on the fringes of society. Obsessed with finding his lost mother, Mike embarks on a journey that takes him from Oregon to Idaho and all the way to Italy. Scott accompanies him on this picaresque odyssey, a path that mixes the harsh reality of the street with echoes of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Gus Van Sant’s work is a poetic and heartbreaking film, a road movie that blends raw realism with the dramatic structure of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. For Mike, the road is a desperate search for a home and a mother figure that may have never existed. His journey is constantly interrupted by narcoleptic fits, which Van Sant visualizes as fragments of memory and desire, a powerful metaphor for his deep sense of uprootedness and his poignant nostalgia for an unattainable intimacy.
Dead Man (1995)
William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland, travels to the frontier town of Machine for a new job, but finds himself involved in a shootout and becomes a fugitive. Mortally wounded, he is found by a Native American named Nobody, who believes him to be the reincarnation of the poet William Blake. Together, they embark on a spiritual journey to the Pacific, a path that transforms the meek accountant into a poet and a killer.
Jim Jarmusch’s “psychedelic western” is a metaphysical road movie that travels towards death. The stunning black-and-white photography and the improvised soundtrack by Neil Young create a hypnotic and spectral atmosphere. William Blake’s journey is not an escape, but a spiritual transmutation. Guided by his mentor Nobody, the protagonist rewrites the myths of the American West, transforming the violence of the frontier into a poetic act and his path into an inevitable and lyrical preparation for the afterlife.
The Straight Story (1999)
Alvin Straight, a 73-year-old veteran, learns that his brother Lyle, with whom he hasn’t spoken in ten years, has had a stroke. Unable to drive a car, he decides to undertake a journey of over 240 miles, from Iowa to Wisconsin, aboard his John Deere lawnmower. His slow pilgrimage through the heart of America becomes an opportunity for encounters and reflections on life, family, and old age.
David Lynch’s most atypical and moving film, The Straight Story subverts the conventions of the road movie by replacing speed and rebellion with slowness, determination, and reconciliation. Alvin’s journey on his lawnmower is a meditative pilgrimage, a secular procession through the landscapes of rural America. Every encounter along the way contributes to building a deep and touching reflection on family ties, pride, and the passage of time, proving that the most important journey is the one towards forgiveness.
Gerry (2002)
Two friends, both named Gerry, decide to go for a hike in a desert area, but they get lost. Without food or water, they begin to wander through a vast and indifferent landscape. Their journey transforms into a struggle for survival and an extreme test of their friendship, reduced to its most essential and brutal elements.
Gus Van Sant’s radical and minimalist experiment takes the road movie to its extreme consequences. Through very long takes and an almost total absence of conventional narrative, the film forces the viewer into a purely sensory and contemplative experience. The journey of the two Gerrys is not an escape, but a literal and metaphorical getting lost in nothingness. Van Sant reduces the genre to its primary elements: movement, landscape, and the slow, inexorable dissolution of a human bond in the face of the vastness of nature.
Part IV: Views from the Margin: Female Horizons and Tales of Survival
This section shifts the focus to films that use the road to tell stories from marginalized perspectives, offering powerful feminist critiques and exploring narratives of social and political struggle. When the protagonist is a woman or belongs to a non-dominant culture, the “freedom” of the road is charged with new dangers and meanings. The journey becomes less a matter of existential angst and more a fight for literal survival, revealing how the open road, a symbol of male freedom, is a space of vulnerability and systemic oppression for others.
Vagabond (1985)
The frozen body of a young vagrant, Mona, is found in a ditch in the south of France. The film reconstructs the last weeks of her life through the fragmented testimonies of those who met her during her wanderings. Her choice of a radical and solitary freedom clashes with the misunderstanding, fear, and desire of a society that does not know how to relate to her.
A feminist masterpiece by Agnès Varda, Vagabond deconstructs the romanticism of “life on the road.” With its almost documentary-like structure, the film does not judge Mona but analyzes the reactions her existence provokes in others. Varda shows how a woman’s attempt to live by a principle of absolute freedom is perceived as a threat, an affront to social conventions. Hers is not a glorification of marginality, but a lucid and painful observation of how society punishes those who refuse to be defined, condemning her protagonist to a lonely and anonymous death.
Central Station (1998)
Dora, a cynical and disillusioned retired teacher, writes letters for illiterates at Rio de Janeiro’s central station. After the mother of a nine-year-old boy, Josué, dies in an accident, Dora finds herself having to accompany the child on a journey across Brazil in search of the father he has never known. Their path becomes an odyssey of redemption and mutual discovery.
The celebrated film by Brazilian director Walter Salles transforms the road movie into a secular pilgrimage towards hope and faith. The journey of Dora and Josué through a Brazil marked by deep social and economic inequalities is a path that leads them from the anonymity and skepticism of the metropolises to the community and spirituality of the rural areas. Central Station is a moving tale about the possibility of rediscovering one’s humanity through the encounter with the other, a journey that seeks not a place, but a connection.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Two teenagers from Mexico City, Tenoch and Julio, from different social classes, convince an older Spanish woman, Luisa, to join them on an impromptu trip to a fictional beach called “Boca del Cielo.” Their hedonistic adventure, filled with sex, friendship, and rivalry, unfolds against the backdrop of a Mexico attraversed by political tensions and deep inequalities.
Alfonso Cuarón’s film is a raw and politically aware coming-of-age story that uses the journey as a tool for social critique. While the protagonists live out their personal dramas, an omnipresent narrator contextualizes them, juxtaposing their sexual and sentimental discoveries with the harsh reality of the landscape they cross. Y tu mamá también is a powerful work that intertwines the exploration of youth identity with a sharp analysis of Mexican society, showing how individual stories are inextricably linked to the history of a nation.
Old Joy (2006)
Two old friends, Mark and Kurt, reunite for a camping weekend in the forests of Oregon. Mark is about to become a father and is adjusting to a life of domestic responsibility, while Kurt continues to live a nomadic and spiritual lifestyle. Their short trip, in search of a secluded hot spring, becomes an opportunity to confront the time that has passed and the emotional distance that now separates them.
Kelly Reichardt’s cinema is made of silences and nuances, and Old Joy is a perfect example. The journey into the woods becomes a space where the unspoken tensions between the two men surface. It is a road movie where the physical journey is short, but the emotional distance traveled is immense. Reichardt delicately explores themes of masculinity, eroding friendship, aging, and political disillusionment, showing how sometimes the most difficult journey is accepting that people, and bonds, change.
Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Wendy, a young homeless woman, is traveling to Alaska in search of work with her only companion, her dog Lucy. When her car breaks down in a small Oregon town, her fragile existence falls apart. After being arrested for a petty theft, she discovers that Lucy has disappeared. Her desperate search for the dog becomes a struggle for survival in an indifferent society.
A minimalist and devastating film about economic precarity. For Wendy, the road is not a choice, but a fragile thread to which her hope is attached. Kelly Reichardt shows how a car breakdown can trigger a total crisis, revealing the cruel absence of a social safety net in America. Wendy and Lucy is a road movie about immobility, a film in which the dream of movement shatters against the harsh reality of poverty. It is an intimate and powerful portrait of a loneliness that is as personal as it is political.
Meek’s Cutoff (2010)
In 1845, three families of settlers crossing Oregon are led off track by Stephen Meek, an arrogant and unreliable guide. Lost in an arid and unknown desert, with water running low, their trust in Meek wavers. The situation is complicated when they capture a Native American, whose presence divides the group between those who see him as a threat and those who see him as the only hope of salvation.
Kelly Reichardt’s “feminist western” deconstructs the myth of the frontier. Through a slow and arduous pace and an almost square visual format that traps the characters, the film immerses the viewer in the exhausting and uncertain reality of the journey. By adopting the perspective of the women, silent and hardworking observers, Reichardt criticizes the blind male arrogance that led the settlers astray. The westward expansion is no longer a heroic epic, but a terrifying story of survival, a journey into the unknown filled with fear and doubt.
Ida (2013)
Poland, 1962. Anna, a young novice raised in a convent, is about to take her vows. Before consecrating her life to God, the mother superior urges her to meet her only living relative, her aunt Wanda. Wanda, a cynical and disillusioned former communist prosecutor, reveals that her real name is Ida Lebenstein and that her parents were Jews, killed during the Nazi occupation. Together, the two women embark on a journey to uncover the truth about their past.
Paweł Pawlikowski’s austere and wonderful work is a road movie of the soul. The journey of Ida and Wanda through rural Poland becomes an investigation into the buried history of a nation, marked by the Holocaust and Stalinism. The black-and-white photography and the almost square format create a formal and contemplative atmosphere. The path forces both women to confront their own identity—Jewish, Catholic, Polish—and to make choices that will forever change their lives.
Part V: The Roads of the New Millennium: Crisis, Community, and New Frontiers
The final section of our journey examines how contemporary independent directors have adapted the road movie to address the anxieties of the 21st century. In a post-American Dream landscape, the journey is no longer a rebellion against a stable system, but a navigation within a shattered one. The central theme shifts from individualistic escape to the search for new forms of community and connection among the ruins of the old world, moving from rebellion to resilience.
Sideways (2004)
Miles, a depressed English teacher and aspiring writer, and Jack, a fading soap opera actor, set off on a week-long trip to California’s wine country to celebrate Jack’s upcoming wedding. While Miles seeks solace in wine, Jack is looking for one last sexual adventure. Their journey will test their friendship, forcing them to come to terms with their failures and their hopes.
Alexander Payne’s bittersweet comedy revitalized the genre at the beginning of the new millennium. The journey through the vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley is a touching, funny, and deeply human exploration of male mid-life crisis, depression, and the fragile nature of friendship. The contrast between Miles’s intellectual snobbery, obsessed with Pinot Noir, and Jack’s superficial hedonism provides the film’s central tension, an unforgettable portrait of two souls adrift.
Locke (2013)
Ivan Locke, a meticulous construction manager, leaves work on the eve of the biggest concrete pour of his career. Instead of going home to his family, he gets in his car and drives to London. During the journey, his life is systematically dismantled through a series of phone calls. a single decision, made hours earlier, triggers a chain of consequences that threaten to destroy his job, his marriage, and his very identity.
A radical formal experiment: a road movie entirely confined within a car, in real time. Steven Knight creates immense tension solely through telephone conversations as Ivan Locke’s world collapses. The journey is not physical, but moral. It is the story of a man driving towards the consequences of a single mistake, trying to hold the pieces of his life together with only the strength of his voice. The road becomes a moving purgatory, a non-place where the past, present, and future collide in one night.
American Honey (2016)
Star, a teenager living in poverty and abuse, abandons her life to join a crew of young magazine subscription sellers. Traveling across the American Midwest in a van, the group lives by their wits, parties, and petty scams. Star falls for the charismatic Jake and immerses herself in a nomadic lifestyle, finding a dysfunctional family and fleeting moments of beauty in a forgotten America.
Andrea Arnold’s immersive and sprawling epic is an almost documentary-like portrait of a marginalized youth. The “mag crew’s” journey is the story of a lost generation seeking a sense of belonging and freedom in a system that exploits them. American Honey is a critique of predatory capitalism that simultaneously celebrates the resilience and vital energy of its characters, who are able to find a wild beauty and an authentic connection in the desolate heart of America.
A vision curated by a filmmaker, not an algorithm
In this video I explain our vision
