original title:
La guerra di Mario
directed by:
cast:
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
costume design:
music:
visual effects:
Sirene Film Post
producer:
production:
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2005
film run:
100'
format:
35mm - colour
release date:
03/03/2006
festivals & awards:
Mario is nine years old and is defined a “difficult child”. The Juvenile Court took him away from his biological family to protect him and give him a chance in life. Giulia and Sandro are a forty-year-old middle class couple, well educated and well off, apparently satisfied; they aren’t married and have been living together for about two years when they decide to ask for a foster child. For all three of them the fosterage is a chance to compare two very distant realities. Giulia falls in love with her new situation of foster mother. She goes through a wonderful rebirth, discovering new enthusiasm and reviving her femininity which had been in a lull for some time. Sandro is intimidated by the child’s presence; he can’t seem to establish a simple, open relationship with him. Mario is catapulted into a world that is completely foreign to him. He finally has a room all to himself, a computer and a large terrace full of geraniums and magnolias, were he can see the sea, almost touch it. An environment exactly the opposite to the one he lived in until today, but all this isn’t enough to alleviate his feeling of loneliness and that he is foreign to it. To save himself, he takes refuge in his own world of fantasy, as only a child’s can be, struggling to find it, and which clashes with the needs and miseries of “outsider” adults. He invents Shad-sky, an imaginary playmate, created in his mind and who he talks to and compares himself to. The pathway that Mario, Giulia and Sandro take to try to live together is difficult and very painful. In the end Giulia and Sandro disappear into another story, where they may gain new knowledge and a different life. And Mario…?