Stories of a Cow Boy

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Stories of a Cow Boy (Storie di un bimbo mucca)

Stories of a Cow Boy (Storie di un bimbo mucca)

original title:

Storie di un bimbo mucca

directed by:

cinematography:

editing:

production:

Wendy Film, Websy

country:

Italy

year:

2025

film run:

88'

format:

colour

status:

Ready (03/11/2025)

Abido is Moroccan, he has been living in Italy since he was five years old, and he grew up in a secular environment. We have two children. After the birth of our first child, he suddenly became closer to the Islamic religion. The result? Today, I share my life with a man who prays five times a day on every occasion and in every place: dinners, outings with friends, trips; a person with whom I argue about the education of our children, with whom I discuss the correct lifestyles according to his God or according to me. He has found faith. I, an atheist and daughter of a secular culture, perhaps blinded by the lights of reason, do not understand it. What is the origin of this change? The cause? With Western paternalism, vague notions of psychoanalysis, and tender maternal projection, I began to search for the cause in Abido’s most intimate thoughts and past. I sought it by exploring old family videos and his childhood memories that reveal a past trauma. Abido retraces his story, which seems like a sad fairy tale. He was breastfed by a cow instead of his mother and then abandoned in Morocco at the age of three, while his parents left for Italy, taking only his older brother with them. As a director and partner, I sought meaning in his rediscovered faith and in what was happening to us, in these memories and in our contrasting visions. It is our words, our versions, our dialogue/conflict that produce the images of the film, searching for them in today's Morocco. It is an uneven struggle between God and the woman, or even between God and the Demon, seemingly impossible to find points of convergence. However, the abandonment experienced lived by Abido concerns both of us: for him, it is a childhood memory, for me, it is a present constructed by Abido, who abandoned me to pursue his God. In that territory of abandonment, we become similar and perhaps capable of finding each other again.