A minor news: of all the objects found during autopsies in the pockets of migrants who died on the perilous journey they had undertaken, one small bag filled with a dark substance caught the eye. It looks like hashish. And as soon as the hand of the autopsy doctor comes into contact with the dark substance, the world seen through the eyes of the boy before he died appears to her: one enters a poetic, almost dreamlike dimension, brought about by Simone Massi's black and white strokes. This vision is interrupted by the hand of a policeman who brings the doctor back to reality. It is he who reveals that the substance is just earth and that it is common for migrants to have this memory of their country with them. The doctor is overcome with pain: a wound she had suffered earlier on her temple is bleeding again. The animation takes us back to the country of origin that the boy never wanted to leave, where he ends up in the arms of his mother.

DIRECTORS' NOTES:
The human being as we know him was born as the outcome of migrations, of mixing, of repeated exits from Africa in the early days of the homo species. Of that we are the outcome and the overcoming to transform ourselves into something different and possibly better. Only young Africans, Asians, South Americans can save Europe from the demographic winter that awaits it. The short film The sense of Earth by Alessandro Ingaria and Simone Massi is an ode to memory and human dignity. Through the fusion of Simone Massi's unmistakable animation and Alessandro Ingaria's live action style, it aspires to awaken collective empathy, offering a voice to those fighting for justice and solidarity. The short film evokes a collective story: that of the pursuit of happiness, but also that of death at sea. A story where emigration is already over and shows its most real and monstrous face.