About the Film
A heartbroken young musician struggles with OCD, abandonment issues, and a shattered sense of self-worth as he pursues an improbable modeling career across Europe in the early '90s, only to discover that finding himself requires confronting the generational trauma that shaped him.
Film Details
Synopsis
Act One: Shattered
Nico is a 21-year-old playing guitar and screaming in an unsuccessful grunge trio. Raised mostly by his mother and her Italian immigrant parents in a small steel town outside Pittsburgh, he's had little contact with his estranged father. While living with his mom and searching for work, he at last secures a position as a local middle school janitor.
On his first day off, Nico takes a three-hour bus ride to visit his girlfriend Robyn at college, only to discover her in bed with another man—an experience that triggers his severe OCD and sends him spiraling into self-loathing.
Back at work pushing a mop after school hours, Nico meets Penny, a flirtatious student who, taken with his looks, invites him to meet her mother Mari, a photographer. The first photo session is rough, with Nico unable to get out of his own way in front of the camera. But he at last loosens up just enough to get a few decent shots. Mari plants a seed of adventure in Nico's mind: take his chances in the fashion capital of Milan, Italy, where she once worked.
With nothing happening in his small corner of the world and facing a bleak future, Nico overcomes both his fears and rationality by buying a one-way flight overseas with dangerously few dollars, a guitar, and an Italian phrasebook in his pocket.
Act Two: Wandering
Milan strips Nico of his illusions. He soon learns that modeling is not as easy as Mari led him to believe. He faces repeated rejection—less for his test photos than for his awkward deportment and lack of confidence. When he runs out of lire, he's evicted from his humble pension alcove and left to sleep shivering on park benches, sneaking into gyms to shower, and rationing breadsticks at pizza joints.
Just when he's about to collapse from malnutrition, Nico meets Arianna, a sophisticated Italian woman who becomes his guardian angel. Though too proud to reveal his desperate circumstances, Nico asks Arianna to help him find his mother's family roots in the mountains of central Italy. Through Arianna, he discovers a new world of timeless refined culture and generational identity in the medieval village of Pacentro, where his grandfather was born.
Their relationship deepens, though it remains complicated—Arianna is still in love with an actor boyfriend. Nico gradually loosens up and admits his feelings in a new song inspired by Arianna, a tender love song far from anything he wrote before. But his feelings are unrequited.
Nico receives a surprising call from his father—the first real connection they've had in years—with a redirect: a request for his son to find his paternal family roots in Yugoslavia during the holidays, with no leads except the name of a village, Lasigna.
Nico's adventure alone in a rickety rental car with no heat takes him through the remote dirt roads and hard switchbacks of a nation on the brink of brutal civil war. He navigates armed checkpoints, witnesses burning villages, and nearly drives into a river. Stuck in a ditch under uncountable stars in unsettling silence save for a rushing river, undammed, Nico thinks: it can't end this way.
With one final heave, he sets his wheels free and finally finds the village of his father's forebears, waking up locals who speak only Croatian and carry rifles. They lead him on a night-long quest through falling snow to find his family, culminating in his great-aunt's funeral the next morning. For one fleeting night, Nico experiences the tamburitza orchestra playing in the village community center—a mystic generational paternal connection and a glimpse of joy. But it ends abruptly the next day when a bomb strikes the little village. Nico escapes with his life.
Act Three: Recognition
Nico's daring adventure releases something deep inside and inspires him with urgency to finish his new love song. Returning to Milan transformed but still uncertain, he continues pursuing modeling work with renewed determination.
Before he can find his footing, Nico receives urgent news: his cherished Italian grandmother, who helped raise him, is dying. He has only days to get back to the U.S. to be at her bedside. He books a last-minute flight, desperately scraping together the money, connecting through New York. The only available seat is next to Rachel, a young cover model whose career is taking off. During the night flight over the Atlantic, Nico shares his wild adventures with her as she takes his hand and rests her head on his shoulder.
Nico arrives just in time. He sits with his grandmother in her final hours, and they share a tender goodbye—she gives him her blessing for his journey, telling him she's proud of who he's becoming. After her funeral, Nico feels the weight of loss but also a strange freedom.
He reconnects with Mari and discovers that her daughter Penny is pregnant—at sixteen, the same age Mari was when she had Penny. The parallel strikes Nico: Mari had been reliving her lost youth through him, perhaps seeing in Nico a reminder of someone from her past. What once seemed like opportunity and guidance now reveals itself as something more complicated—a woman's attempt to reclaim a life she never got to live. The modeling world that once promised escape was never about him at all.
Nico scrapes together money for one more adventure to Europe, this time to Paris, where Rachel is walking in Fashion Week for Thierry Mugler. He arrives broke and desperate, busking on the streets, singing the love song he's been perfecting throughout his journey.
In a final act of bold vulnerability, Nico crashes Rachel's runway show, screaming her name from the audience. Rachel spots him in her rearview mirrors (attached to her avant-garde motorcycle-inspired outfit) and turns sharply, causing other models to trip in a domino effect. Security ejects Nico into the cold Parisian night.
But something has changed. In all the loss and rejection, Nico has found his voice as a poet.
Epilogue: Full Circle
The film reveals its framing device: the story has been told by Mature Nico, now a middle-aged street performer in Paris. He's the same busker we saw briefly in Act Two, the one who helped Young Nico when he first arrived in the city.
Mature Nico stands eloquently on a Paris street corner, reciting poetry and singing his completed love song to passing tourists. His hat sits empty on the sidewalk, but his spirit remains intact. Above him, from an apartment window, the sounds of young lovers echo—the same sounds that opened the film—suggesting the eternal cycle of desire, heartbreak, and the search for meaning.
The wandering soul persists. And in that persistence, there is grace.
Key Themes
- Generational Trauma & Breaking Cycles - Nico's journey mirrors his parents' failed relationships and his grandparents' displacement. Mari's story parallels this: she became a single mother at sixteen, just as her daughter Penny does, repeating the cycle of missed opportunities and lost youth.
- Masculine Identity & Vulnerability - Struggling with what it means to be a man in a world that commodifies male beauty while demanding emotional stoicism
- Art as Survival - Music becomes Nico's lifeline, not as a path to fame, but as a way to process pain and find meaning
- Family & Heritage - Finding his Italian roots in Pacentro and Croatian roots in war-torn Yugoslavia connects Nico to something larger than himself. His grandmother's blessing before her death provides the emotional foundation for his final transformation.
- Class & Shame - The modeling world exposes Nico to wealth and beauty, intensifying his working-class shame inherited from his steel mill-working family
- The Wandering Soul - From the Summer of Love to present-day Paris, the search for meaning and connection persists across generations
Main Characters
A young man raised primarily by his mother and Italian immigrant grandparents in a small steel town, Nico struggles with severe OCD triggered by his girlfriend's betrayal. His internal conflict—OCD-driven perfectionism vs. chaotic reality, working-class shame vs. artistic ambition—drives him across Europe in search of meaning. The role requires vulnerability, musical ability, and capacity for physical transformation (from desperate homeless to model). Think early River Phoenix, Timothée Chalamet, or Lucas Hedges.
Sophisticated, emotionally intelligent, haunted by her own romantic trauma. Though still in love with an actor boyfriend, Arianna sees Nico's worth when he can't see it himself. She offers him shelter, introduces him to his Italian heritage in Pacentro, and helps him find his voice as an artist. Monica Bellucci, Bérénice Bejo, or Rebecca Hall types.
A distant figure in Nico's life who reaches out during the holidays with an unusual request: find our Croatian roots in war-torn Yugoslavia. This phone call, the first real connection they've had in years, sends Nico on the most harrowing and transformative leg of his journey. The father represents the paternal side of Nico's fractured family and the unspoken weight of generational displacement. Limited screen time but crucial emotional impact.
A single mother who became pregnant at sixteen, Mari sees in Nico a chance to reclaim the modeling career she never had. Her attraction to him is subtextual (left to actor interpretation), complicated by her genuine belief she's helping him. When her daughter Penny becomes pregnant at the same age Mari did, the generational cycle completes. Tragic rather than villainous. Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, or Julianne Moore types.
A young model whose career is taking off. She connects with Nico on the flight back to the U.S. for his grandmother's funeral, offering a moment of tenderness during his grief. She represents the fantasy of success in the modeling world—beautiful, successful, walking in Paris Fashion Week for Thierry Mugler—but ultimately unreachable for someone like Nico.
Still in Paris, still singing. Has he failed or succeeded? The film leaves this ambiguous—he's survived, he's made art, but he's still alone with an empty hat.
Tone & Visual Style
Cinematic Influences
- Wong Kar-wai's intimate framing and neon melancholy
- Luca Guadagnino's European sensuality
- The Safdie Brothers' anxiety and desperation
- Terrence Malick's cosmic voiceover and nature imagery
Color Palette
- Pennsylvania: Muted grays, industrial decay, harsh fluorescents
- Milan: Warm golds and shadows; beauty amid grit
- Yugoslavia: Stark whites (snow), deep blues (Adriatic), fire oranges (burning villages)
- Paris: Cool blues; romantic but melancholic
Music
Original songs by Nico (grunge, folk, early '90s alternative), tamburitza orchestra (traditional Croatian/Balkan folk), and sparse score emphasizing silence and ambient sound. The film builds to Nico's completed love song in the final scene.
Writer's Statement
Noticed You Today is the story of my early adulthood, a time when I was broken, homeless, and convinced I was worthless. The modeling industry promised some undefined validation, but was a futile escape for someone like myself with limited self-worth. The film asks: What happens when a young man with no sense of self is thrust into a world that only values surfaces?
This is not a redemption story. Nico doesn't become a supermodel or a rock star. He survives. He makes art. He finds small moments of human connection in Milan, in Croatia, in Paris. That's the victory.
The frame narrative, Mature Nico as the Parisian busker, suggests that our youthful wandering doesn't end in conventional success. But it does lead somewhere: to a man who can look back with compassion on the boy he was, and sing a love song to the world that wounded him.