Alessandro Vantini Unveils Nine-Hour Cinematic Epic: Thought is Blood Around the Heart - A 20-Year Journey

Visionary international award-winning actor, director, and producer brings philosophical odyssey to screen after two decades from book to theater to screen

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, July 3, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The long-anticipated film Thought is Blood Around the Heart, written and directed by international award-winning director, actor, producer, Alessandro Vantini, is officially in production. A monumental nine-hour cinematic work born from two decades of internal and artistic inquiry, the film represents the culmination of Vantini’s lifelong dialogue with philosophy, theater, and cinema—as three possible ways to understand the mystery of the human being and the possible influence of the soul in human life.

The journey began not as a script, but as a solitary monologue.

In 2005, standing alone in a rehearsal room, Vantini began speaking to Hamlet. Not only Shakespeare’s Hamlet—but also the hidden meanings that the character carries within himself, in his own heart, and which are not revealed except through total dedication. “In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,” as Hamlet says (Hamlet, Act III, Scene II). "You don’t choose something like this," Vantini reflects. "It chooses you. And it won’t let you go until you’ve lived it completely." From that first encounter, a performance emerged. The performance, which lasted four years in the theater, gave birth to a 600-page book. And from the book—a film, now taking shape.

The title? Thought is Blood Around the Heart (Amleto o dell’immortalità dell’anima)—a phrase borrowed from the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles and now irrevocably tied to Vantini’s legacy.
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A Film Twenty Years in the Making

The project defies genre and convention. It is not an adaptation. It is not a retelling. “This is not a film,” Vantini once said. “It’s a responsibility.”

And it is one that critics, scholars, and performers are already naming among the most spiritually and artistically ambitious cinematic undertakings of the decade. From the outset, the work has drawn comparisons to the philosophical cinema of some masters of the past. But Thought is Blood Around the Heart is its own phenomenon—an integration of movement, silence, myth, and existential confrontation.
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Praise from Scholars and Critics

“He is almost like a maître à penser,” writes philosopher Elisabetta Bovo in the preface to the book. “Drawing on Greek tragedy, ancient philosophy, and Shakespearean archetypes—not to imitate them, but to reflect their presence within himself and his audience.”

Bovo is not alone in her assessment. Nicola Pasqualicchio, renowned professor of theater history, describes the work as transformative, “a form of living philosophy, embodied thought.” The performance, he notes, “leaves the viewer changed.” “But there is also a deeper and more substantial sense of theatre, which draws nourishment from its archaic and sacred roots, and which reached its extraordinary fullness with Greek tragedy, while still radiating its reflections in great subsequent episodes of Western dramaturgy, such as Shakespeare's theatre…”

Others echo that sentiment. A friend, Isa Perazza De Pinedo, reflects: “You are struck. Not by artifice—but by the terrifying intimacy of truth. He uses the mask not to hide, but to reveal.”
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From Page to Performance to Picture

The book itself—Il pensiero è sangue attorno al cuore—was published in 2014. It could be described as a study in Platonic ethics, but also as “a metaphysical treatise disguised as a theatrical diary.” Its premise: the actor becomes the battlefield where life and myth collide. The hero (Hamlet, Oedipus) is not portrayed, but embodied. “The audience is not entertained but transformed.”

Vantini encourages—sometimes provokes—himself before all else, and the viewer, to share a question: not only who Hamlet is, but also who we ourselves are. Who is the human being?

The film is structured as a non-linear exploration of conscience, identity, doubt, questions, the limits of vengeance, and the hard path toward a possible forgiveness.
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Hamlet, Myth

In Vantini’s interpretation, Hamlet is not a prince paralyzed by doubt, but a soul confronting eternity. “Hamlet is not indecisive,” he says. “He is torn between vengeance and truth. And truth—if it is real—always requires sacrifice.” That being said, Hamlet is a philosophy student in Wittenberg. The film merges Sophocles and Shakespeare, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Giordano Bruno, Hegel, Nietzsche, and then Pessoa, Stanislavski, and Socrates. It is neither East nor West, ancient nor modern—but something “classic,” that is to say, “in between” and perpetually current. As Bovo writes: “A sacred rite. A spiritual confrontation. A mirror, not a play.”

Vantini re-lives as an actor the passages of these great philosophers through the technique of acting—as if these texts were monologues for the theater. The authentic challenge at the heart of the film is this: to try to get involved more and more deeply in the search for the character’s soul by the means of philosophy. It is precisely in the search through the philosophical passages that the path becomes increasingly complex, articulated, painful—and ultimately original. “This is not entertainment. It is an epiphany,” Bovo wrote.
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Philosophical Cinema for the New Century

Designed for global festivals, academic settings, and cultural centers alike, Thought is Blood Around the Heart is positioned to be more than a film—it is a teaching, a process, a place of encounter. Producers and co-production partners are already in talks and select preview screenings will begin in early 2026. The film’s nine hours will be released as a cinematic experience, with limited engagements at festivals, museums, and cultural institutions across Europe and the U.S. “I’ve already given myself over to the stage,” Vantini once told a colleague. “But this is different. This is the moment when the actor disappears. And only the soul speaks.”

Indeed, many who witnessed the original monologue described him not as performing, but channeling. Journalist Fontanini wrote in an article about the 2006 theater performance: “Severe and demanding, Vantini’s text unfolds in a series of emotional reversals that reveal the enchantment of art through myth. Feverish, estranged, classical and bold, the actor, who also directs, gives life to a theater within a theater that makes austerity and research the quintessence of truth. A passionate and courageous show that, through a sharp and original investigation, flies high beyond appearances to reveal the soul hidden behind the tricks and disguises of pain.”

A former collaborator said: “He didn’t interpret Hamlet. He opened a door. He was Hamlet. And he was Oedipus. And maybe even Socrates.” The transformation was physical. energetic, and, to many, divine. At the beginning of the movie, the human being on stage says: “An actor always masks himself… and in any case… behind the character. I have brought myself on stage. No mask is possible anymore. …to pursue research, the human being uses the actor…Everything that happens here, to the actor… or to the character… or characters…is the responsibility of the human being… All this HAPPENS to me… and only to me…” The question that moves everything is: “How far can an actor's research go? How deeply can be at stake the 'human being' who tries to act the character of a 'human being'? Or is he trying to act himself?”

Filming continues through early 2026. The film’s collaborative production welcomes partners in philosophy, education, theater, cinema and spiritual thought.
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About Alessandro Vantini
Vantini is widely celebrated for his 2018 directorial achievement, Nothing Beyond Measure (Antigone), which earned 157 international awards and over 200 official festival selections. His cinematic journey spans decades and also includes A Sud del Sud (2014), a neorealist reflection on migration and identity; The Guardian of the Ice (2017), an ecological and existential meditation; and his most decorated work.

In addition to his cinematic work, Vantini has performed over 30 lead roles in classic and contemporary theater — from Oedipus and Creonte to Prospero, Eddie (Hurly-burly), and God (Oh God). He has worked across mediums, including television and opera, notably in Il Cavaliere dell’Intelletto (1996), with music by Franco Battiato.

Trained at the Duse Studio in Rome under Francesca De Sapio of the Actors Studio in New York—and a life member since 1999—Vantini’s artistic lineage is rooted in discipline, transformation, and artistic truth. He has portrayed some of the most profound characters in the Western canon, with critics praising his portrayals as "philosophically arresting and spiritually resonant." Most recently, he was honored with the Best Actor Award at the 2025 Muses Awards and Film Festival in Greece.
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Contact
To schedule an interview with Alessandro Vantini, request the full press kit, or inquire about screenings, speaking engagements, co-production, or investment, visit www.alessandrovantinifilms.com or info@alessandrovantinifilms.com

Global Media Contact: Gallagher & Gallagher Worldwide, Inc.
Daisy Gallagher, CEO
M. Michaels - Press Director / newsroom@gallagherworldwide.com
Alessandro Vantini
info@alessandrovantinifilms.com
www.alessandrovantinifilms.com

Alessandro Vantini, international filmmaker, philosophical cinema, award-winning actor, Shakespeare and film, Hamlet film, Greek tragedy, Franco Battiato, Elisabetta Bovo, Platonic ethics, thought-provoking cinema, spiritual film, nine-hour film, theater to film, classic philosophy in film, independent filmmaker, European cinema, cinematic arts, soul in cinema, avant-garde director, Antigone film awards, 2026 film festivals, cultural cinema, actor as philosopher, myth in film, Vantini 2025 film, artistic transformation, metaphysical cinema, spiritual drama

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Gallagher & Gallagher Worldwide, inc.
info@alessandrovantini.com
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