"Please leave a message" is a search for the space that defines our freedom. It's an obsession, a phobia and a human emotional story. The protagonist, Akiko, is a young Japanese girl visiting Rome apparently as a normal tourist: her pilgrimage follows all of the characteristic traits. But in fact she's in the Italian city to build up a memory of a new personal world. Akiko decides to collect objects that create a synthetic catalogue of what has deep meaning to her. These selected items are capable of evoking parts of her life in a non nostalgic way. After isolating herself from the rest of the society, she decides to be locked forever into this new self-constructed reality. The only external contact Akiko has, is with her voice mail in Tokyo, which she uses as a repository black- box of her consciousness. By the end of this interior journey she is freed, but completely lonely. The price of awareness is both a total self-imposed isolation and a sole imprisonment.