NOTICED YOU TODAY
NOTICED YOU TODAY is a surreal drama feature written by Tom Demar
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WRITER’S NOTE: “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” (-Goethe) I might be better off in life had I done things differently. But then I wouldn't have these incredible stories to tell. And this film would never happen, a film about generational trauma and learning to value one’s life, based almost entirely on actual events.
LOGLINE: 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.
GENRE: coming-of-age drama
TARGET AUDIENCE: 18-40, art house/festival audiences, international cinema enthusiasts
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STYLE: A surreal psychological deconstruction intertwined with historical events about generational trauma, the narrative plays out as a picaresque personal experience, featuring music, art, philosophy and fashion.
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FILM COMPS: INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS meets CALL ME BY YOUR NAME​
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PRIMARY SETTING: Italy, U.S. (Pennsylvania); SECONDARY: Croatia, Paris
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SYNOPSIS:
Act One: Shattered
Setting: Small-town Pennsylvania, 1990
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NICO plays guitar and screams in an unsuccessful grunge trio. Nico was mostly raised by his mom and her parents, Italian immigrants, in a small steel town outside Pittsburgh, but he hadn’t been in touch with his father. Living with his mom while looking for a job, he at last secures a position as a local middle school janitor. On his first day off he takes a bus for three hours to see his girlfriend at college, only to find her in bed with someone else, triggering his severe OCD. Pushing a mop after school hours, Nico meets a student who, taken with his looks, invites Nico to meet her mom, a former fashion photographer. That first session is rough, with Nico unable to get out of his own way in front of a camera. But he at last loosens up just enough to get a few decent shots and the student’s mom plants a seed of adventure in Nico to 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 a bleak future, Nico overcomes both his fears and his rationality by buying a one-way flight overseas with dangerously few dollars and an Italian phrasebook in his pocket.
Act Two: Wandering
Setting: Milan & Yugoslavia, 1990-1991
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Milan. Nico soon learns that modeling is not as easy as he was led to believe as he repeatedly faces rejection less for his test photos as for his awkward deportment. When he runs out of lire, he's evicted from his humble pension alcove and is left to sleep shivering on a park bench. Desperate, Nico asks an Italian woman, Arianna, to help him find his mother’s family roots in the mountains of central Italy, although he’s too proud to reveal his plight. Through Arianna, Nico discovers a new world of timeless refined culture and generational identity. He gradually loosens up, and admits his feelings in a new song inspired by Arianna, a love song far from anything he wrote before, but his feelings are unrequited. Nico receives a surprising call from his father with a redirect: a request for his son to find his paternal family roots in Yugoslavia, with no leads except the name of a village.​
Nico’s adventure alone in a rickety rental car with no heat on the remote dirt roads and hard switchbacks of a nation on the brink of brutal civil war brings him to more shivering and desperation in a land so bucolic he’s left holding a useless map. Stuck in a ditch under uncountable stars in unsettling silence save for a rushing river, undammed, it can’t end this way. With one final heave Nico sets his wheels free and finally finds the village of his father’s forebears, waking up the locals who speak only Croatian and carry rifles, and who lead him on a night-long quest to find his family. But a mystic generational paternal connection ends abruptly when a bomb strikes the little village. Nico escapes with his life.
Act Three: Recognition
Setting: Milan, Pennsylvania, Paris, Spring 1991
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Nico's daring adventure releases something deep inside, and inspires him with urgency to finish his new love song. But he leaves Milan to return to the U.S. to send off his dying cherished Italian grandmother who helped raise him, booking a last-minute flight connecting through New York, with the only available seat next to a young cover model whose career is taking off. Nico shares his wild adventures with her as she takes his hand and rests her head on his shoulder on the night flight over the Atlantic. After his grandmother's funeral, Nico once again adventures to Europe, this time to Paris, to chase an elusive love, but instead he finds, in all the loss and rejection, his voice as a poet.
Epilogue: Full Circle
Setting: Paris, Present Day
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. He sings his completed love song to passing tourists, his hat empty but his spirit intact. Above him, 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.
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CHARACTER BREAKDOWN:
NICO (Lead, 21 years old)
Journey: Self-loathing → Survival → Self-acceptance
Internal Conflict: OCD-driven perfectionism vs. chaotic reality; working-class shame vs. artistic
ambition
Casting Notes: Needs vulnerability, musical ability, and capacity for physical transformation
(gaunt/homeless to model). Think early River Phoenix, Timothée Chalamet, or Lucas Hedges.
ARIANNA (Supporting Lead, late 20s-early 30s)
Role: Nico's surrogate mother/guardian angel
Arc: Moves from heartbreak over actor boyfriend to recognizing her own strength
Essence: Sophisticated, emotionally intelligent, haunted by her own romantic trauma. She sees Nico's worth when he can't see it himself.
Casting Notes: Monica Bellucci, Bérénice Bejo, or Rebecca Hall types, elegant but grounded.
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KEY THEMES:
1. Generational Trauma & Breaking Cycles
Nico's journey mirrors his parents' failed relationships and his grandparents' displacement. The film explores how family wounds pass down through generations, and how we can choose to heal rather than repeat.
2. Masculine Identity & Vulnerability
Nico struggles with what it means to be a man in a world that commodifies male beauty while demanding emotional stoicism. His OCD, his sensitivity, and his artistic soul are at odds with industrial-era masculinity.
3. Art as Survival
Music becomes Nico's lifeline, not as a path to fame, but as a way to process pain and find meaning. His songwriting evolves from primal screams to tender love songs over the course of the film.
4. Class & Shame
The modeling world exposes Nico to wealth and beauty he's never encountered, intensifying his working-class shame. His grandparents worked in steel mills; he's posing in underwear. The film doesn't judge either path, it explores the psychological cost of crossing class boundaries.
5. The Wandering Soul
The voiceover from Mature Nico frames the journey as existential: "Why does the wandering soul appear from time without beginning?" The film suggests we're all searching for our place in the universe.
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VISUAL & TONAL PALETTE:
Color & Cinematography:
Pennsylvania scenes: 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
Aesthetic 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
Music:
Original songs by Nico (grunge, folk, early '90s alternative)
Tamburitza orchestra (traditional Croatian/Balkan folk)
Sparse score emphasizing silence and ambient sound
The film builds to Nico's completed love song in the final scene
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SUMMARY:
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Imagine Inside Llewyn Davis's ($11M budget) in scope and tone, struggling artist desperation, set against Call Me By Your Name's ($3.5M budget) intimate European sensuality, that's Noticed You Today. A broke musician with OCD becomes a model in Milan, sleeps on park benches, and travels to war-torn Yugoslavia searching for his family roots, all while trying to understand who he is beneath the surface. We're targeting $8-12M for a character-driven period piece across four countries. Shooting schedule: 35-40 days (Italy, Croatia, Paris, Pennsylvania).
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WRITER'S STATEMENT:
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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 salvation but delivered exploitation. 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.
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