original title:
Invelle
directed by:
cast:
Marco Baliani, Ascanio Celestini, Mimmo Cuticchio, Luigi Lo Cascio, Neri Marcorè, Giovanna Marini, Achille Massi, Gemma Massi, Toni Servillo, Filippo Timi
screenplay:
producer:
production:
Minimum Fax Media, Amka Films Productions, supported by Ministero della Cultura, RAI Kids, RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera, with the support of Eurimages, Regione Lazio, ECRA Edizioni del Credito Cooperativo
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy/Switzerland
year:
2023
film run:
92'
format:
colour & b/w
release date:
29/08/2024
genre:
animation film
festivals & awards:
In 1918 Zelinda is a peasant child with a mother in heaven and a father at war. She’s forced to leave her childhood behind and commit to housekeeping, to rearing her siblings and cattle. There comes the day when Zelinda has a mother and a father once again. At the village fair, the child clings to her father with eyes wide open to let in everything she sees. No matter how real or dreamed up it was, Zelinda has seen it all and has her own idea of how the world spins.
It spins so fast, that her story suddenly becomes someone else’s. In 1943 Assunta is a peasant child who lives standing on one leg, her head in the clouds and on a war footing (there goes another one!). As soon as she gets a chance, Assunta makes herself a new colorful dress, jumps and oops-a-daisy!, the war was just a big joke—or it’s over anyway.
War is over (maybe!), and a whole world disappears along with it: a jump that’s bigger than it seemed. In 1978 Icaro is a peasant child who spins in circles. He has to do—and he will—what his mother and grandma dreamed of many years ago, something that wasn’t possible for them. And those who lived before them. And before. Even long before.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
In the part of the world where I was born and raised there is nothing important to see and remember, nothing that could be considered worthy of ending up in a book. A sort of “Nowhere,” a non-place from which history has demanded and taken everything that it wanted and could. In exchange for that history we have gotten stories, the kind that are either passed on orally or are lost.