When the past re-emerges, it can prove to be uncontrollable and become another present, the here and now of a space that is contemporaneously clear-cut and indefinite, suspended within a frame of mind that can take your breath away. The movie is a journey inside this dimension, as it recounts what it means to cross this threshold and teeter between unexpected tears and sudden laughter. A reflection on old age and what you can discover by looking at yourself in this mirror, the film is the outcome of a long process of listening and dozens of lengthy encounters in five regions in Italy, in search of yesterday’s world, that sometimes seems very far away and sometimes strangely present.
Sainey will go blind in a few years due to a degenerative disease. He is determined to learn as many things as possible to prepare himself to live in the dark.
Michele is eleven years old and lives in a small town in the mountains of Trento, with his mother and his paternal grandfather Pietro; his father has recently died. The boy’s pain meets that of Dani, a boy from Togo, who is a total ‘stranger’ to that place covered in snow which he has never seen before in his life.