original title:
Sorelle Mai
directed by:
cast:
Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Elena Bellocchio, Donatella Finocchiaro, Letizia Bellocchio, Gianni Schicchi Gabrieli, Alba Rohrwacher, Valentina Bardi, Silvia Ferretti, Irene Baratta, Maria Luisa Bellocchio, Alberto Bellocchio, Anna Bianchi
cinematography:
Marco Sgorbati, Giampaolo Conti (1999)
editing:
set design:
G. Maria Sforza Fogliani (2005)
costume design:
music:
production:
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2010
film run:
110'
format:
35mm - colour
release date:
18/03/2011
festivals & awards:
The film comprises six episodes of a single story filmed in Bobbio during six different years between 1999 and 2008 (with the participants in the “Fare Cinema” course of those years). It tells of a little girl, Elena (Elena Bellocchio), growing up between the age of 5 and 13, and of her mother, Sara (Donatella Finocchiaro), her uncle Giorgio (Pier Giorgio Bellocchio), and their difficult relationship… Elena lives with her aunts in Bobbio, because her mother, an actress, is always on the move but comes back whenever she can, as does her brother for other reasons… One day, Sara decides that Elena should live with her in Milan, leaving the village and her aunts, perhaps for ever… But in the fourth episode, Sara returns to Bobbio with Elena, to sign the sale of the house, and finds Giorgio increasingly restless about what he wants to do. The fifth episode tells of an exam in an imaginary school in the village: one of the teachers (Alba Rohrwacher) is a paying guest in the aunts’ house. Her problem arises from the decision to fail one pupil for presumed “inattention”. But she passes him: in truth, it was she who was “inattentive”… In the sixth episode, we find Giorgio again who, up to his eyeballs in debt, takes refuge in Bobbio; his sister will help him… The episode and the film end with a show on the Trebbia… Starring Gianni (Gianni Schicchi Gabrieli), a family friend