Edoardo Morabito

Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.

In the heart of Rome, face to Saint Peter’s, stands a Palace. The owner, like a renaissance patron, has once been offering shelter to a bizarre group of friends, embracing their joyfully ambitious causes. The perfect hideout from where to pursue the most aleatory artistic projects, far from the hassles of life. Now in their 50s’, they are suddenly reunited by the premature death of their charismatic leader, Mauro. He left something tangible to the group of friends: hours of footage where he directed them in the most diverse roles, a supposed masterpiece that was never finished, and now a a mirror reflecting images from the past. The mourning, in the shudder of a moment, shakes the numbed spirits, leading them into a radical confrontation with their future.

1992년 7월 19일, 시칠리의 팔레르모에서 마피아가 폭탄 테러를 일으킨다. 이로 인해 마피아의 눈엣가시였던 치안판사 파올로 볼세리노와 많은 경찰들이 사망했다. 감독은 이 비극적 사건의 25주기를 맞아 그후 시칠리아에 어떤 일들이 있었는지 기록한다. 그리고 이 과정에서 사진 작가인 레티샤 바타글리아, 추모 음악회를 준비하는 음악인들을 만난다.

Ghosts from the past and the present inhabit the old neighborhood of San Berillo, in Catania. It is 1958: while brothels are being shut down all over Italy, San Berillo is razed to the ground and its inhabitants are deported to the suburbs. A piece of the neighborhood, however, remains intact and thousands of prostitutes from all over Italy find shelter there, creating one of the biggest red light districts in the Mediterranean. Until 2000, when a police raid forces the neighborhood's inhabitants to abandon their homes once again.