original title:
Valparaiso
directed by:
cast:
Manuela Martelli, Marco Felli, Barbara Chichiarelli, Laura Rovetti
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
costume design:
music:
producer:
production:
Kino Produzioni, DNA Cinematografica, supported by Ministero della Cultura, with the support of Nuovo Imaie, with the support of Roma Lazio Film Commission
country:
Italy
year:
2016
film run:
20'
format:
DCP - colour
status:
Ready (13/07/2016)
festivals & awards:
Rocio is pent in an immigration detention center in Rome and she got pregnant during her reclusion. She doesn’t want to tell how it happened nor who did that. She prefers to remain silent.
Law does not permit to hold a pregnant woman so Rocio gets released with a temporary residency permit at her fourth month of pregnancy. Now she is free but she has to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES:
Immigration detention center are places of segregation and coercion where freedom gets systematically denied. An irregular migrant gets pregnant during her segregation and for this reason, she gets a residency permit, a job, an apparent freedom.
Sometimes, free will and freedom of choice are only an illusion. The negation of a bond can reinforce it even more instead of erasing it. With Valparaiso I wanted to show these contradiction through fragments of Rocio’s life. I chose to film it with a bare language in order to narrate in the most essential way, the painful journey of a woman denying and then accepting her being mother.