The team behind Marwencol visits a town that is also a play in this Spettacolo trailer

The 2010 documentary Marwencol is about a man who tries to find solace after a vicious beating by building a miniature WWII-era European town in his backyard, and if that movie is about one guy using tiny people to create stories, then the next film from Marwencol’s Jeff Malmberg and Chris Shellen is about a bunch of people using themselves to create stories. Titled Spettacolo, the film concerns a group of villagers in Tuscany who try to solve their issues by putting on a play about their actual lives. As covered in this trailer, they build sets to recreate the town, they come up with storylines about whatever they’re going through, and they all play themselves. It’s sort of like a real-life version of Synecdoche, New York, but hopefully less impenetrably confusing and annoyingly weird. Not that Spettacolo doesn’t look weird, of course, but at least the people putting on a play of their lives seem to understand that they’re weird.

Spettacolo will be released on September 6.