original title:
Welcome to Paradise
directed by:
cast:
Marta Cammi, Sofiane Bahari, Giorgia Respelli, Luca Massari, Matteo Lorenzo, Vincenzo Michelini, Giovanni Rossi
screenplay:
Alessandra Rosso
editing:
set design:
costume design:
music:
Peppe Frana
production:
country:
Italy
year:
2023
film run:
24'
format:
colour
status:
Ready (25/07/2023)
festivals & awards:
Nadia, a solitary and wary girl, wears a patch over one eye. On the bank of the river, in search of adventures in the company of some stray kittens, she sees a young man ill-treated by boys from the village and shut up in an abandoned shack. Nadia goes away. But then, curious, she goes back and tries to set the “prisoner” free. The wall that separates them opens up for Nadia the possibility of playing at being someone else and experiencing, in this fascination, a sudden desire to grow.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
Adolescence is the age of the possible; it is the age at which everything is in the making. It will be the encounters, the random events of life that shape the future. But it is also possible that, in adolescence, personalities are already partly defined, that characters, ways of being in the world, attitudes toward others can be identified. In a way, the world of adults is already present and visible in the teenage world. Indeed, it is as if the essential traits of the grownup world were more evident in adolescents, as they are less controlled. Precisely because they are not yet fully formed, nuances and contradictions are easier to discern. Perhaps this is what explains my interest in that world: exploring human relationships at a moment in life’s course in which they are less under control and, although less well-defined, more clearly visible.