25 November 2012

La scoperta dell'alba



Susanna Nicchiarelli : 2012
Discovery at Dawn

Rome, 1981. With seven shots from a revolver, two members of the Red Brigade gun down Professor Mario Tessandori in the university courtyard, in plain sight. He dies in the arms of his friend and colleague Lucio Astengo. A few weeks later, Lucio Astengo himself disappears. It is now 2011. Caterina and Barbara Astengo, who were six and twelve years old when their father vanished, have put their family's beach home – now abandoned for some time – up for sale. The house is full of memories of a childhood interrupted by their father's disappearance, of a family broken and never put back together. In one corner, a 1970s rotary dial telephone is still plugged in to the wall, though the line has been disconnected for years. Caterina feeling nostalgic at the sight of the old phone, lifts the receiver and inexplicably hears a dial tone. She tries dialling a few numbers, but the phone remains silent. Then, almost as a game, she tries the number of their home in the city thirty years earlier. This time, she hears ringing and a child's voice unexpectedly answers. It is herself, twelve years old, one week before her father's disappearance. The film premiered in the Prospettive Italia section at Rome Film Festival 2012.

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