The Salone, unscripted
This new work builds on Vassallo’s photographic research project "Comunità Continua", which he carried out in 2024 on commission from the Salone del Mobile.Milano. For the film, he once again collaborated with a well-established team – including cinematographer and colourist Francesco Mannironi, sound designer Daniele Guarnera, and British pianist Anne Lovette, who contributes the atmospheric soundscape. The result is a multi-layered moment in time that deliberately eschews a conventional script, weaving together authentic voices and spontaneous encounters to create an open-ended narrative. Alongside Salone del Mobile President Maria Porro, the participants include numerous designers such as Piero Lissoni, Fabio Novembre, Elena Salmistraro, Gabriele Buratti, Luca Nichetto and Francesca Lanzavecchia. They recount how a year of creative development is condensed into a single, fast-paced week. The film also offers an insight into the work of journalists during the event: the camera crew accompanied our editor-in-chief Anna Moldenhauer for a sequence at SaloneSatellite, the visionary centre of the Salone del Mobile, where the work of young talents under the age of 35 can be explored.
At the same time, the film broadens the perspective beyond the institutional design system: from the street photographer who has been selling Polaroids for years to the taxi driver who observes the city’s transformation during the Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week through the conversations his passengers have in the back seat – they all paint a contemporary picture of the creative energy in Milan. Vassallo describes Lost and Roll as an "inner portrait" of the Salone del Mobile – a cinematic exploration of the mindsets of those who design, build, move, celebrate or work behind the scenes to ensure that this complex cultural system functions. For Maria Porro, the film is an intimate journey into the heart of the event, a mosaic of creative chaos, sustainability aspirations and the daily work that drives both the design industry and society. Particularly striking is the character of Munshi, alias Romeo, the Polaroid seller who has witnessed the transformation for 25 years. His instant photographs become a metaphor for the simultaneously fleeting and enduring nature of design: "Through the eyes of visionary designers, tireless craftspeople and figures such as Munshi – the Polaroid seller on the pavement, a silent witness to 25 years of urban transformation – the film shines a light on the human tide behind the cultural and economic machine that is the Salone. Those faded Polaroids, signs of a Milan in perpetual motion and change, become a powerful metaphor: as ephemeral as a trade fair, as indelible as an iconic chair. We celebrate this narrative that combines permanence and transience, the dignity of making and the magic of designing, reminding us that the true luxury of design lies in the human stories that animate it," says Maria Porro.
The premiere of Lost and Roll will take place on 16 April 2026 at 9.15 pm at the Anteo Spazio Cinema in Milan. Further screenings are still being planned. The 54-minute documentary was produced by Maddalena Satta for White Box Studio in collaboration with NoClaps.
