The Veil of Maya (second feature)

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The Veil of Maya (Il velo di Maya)

original title:

Il velo di Maya

screenplay:

cinematography:

costume design:

music:

Gigi D'Alessio, Adriano Pennin

production:

Rosemovie, International Video 80, supported by Ministero della Cultura, with the support of Regione Toscana

country:

Italy

year:

2016

film run:

90'

format:

colour

festivals & awards:

  • Ischia Film Festival 2017: Competition

Anna is 40 and depressed.
2 years before right before getting married, she found out that her boyfriend was cheating on her with her sister. Even worse, her sister got pregnant. Since then Anna has never recovered.
She's unemployed, she doesn't go out, she doesn't have a relationship, she doesn't have friends. She takes pills and sleeps all day. Her only distractions are Paloma, the transexual neighbour and the grandmother.
Her mom wants to help her, she spurs her to go to self-esteem classes. Federica, her cousin, tries to do the same. She brings Anna out at night, wanting to distract her, but it seems like she's the one who really wants to have fun.
Things start to change when Anna realizes there's a boy following her, Anna thinks he's in love with her. When she talks about this boy to his family, no one seems to believe her. They are sure that it's her mind playing with her and that this is imaginary friend is caused by her depression. The only person that believes her is the seer, who she met at the park with her grandma.
He advises her to pick up her life. He talks to her about a lover who was going to come in her life.
So when she finds flowers on her door, she takes the seer's advice. Since the lover seems to be shy, she decides to make the first move.
To really understand who that lover was, she starts following him everywhere he goes...

DIRECTOR’S NOTES:
"THE VEIL OF MAYA", is the second film by Elisabetta Rocchetti, and is a romantic comedy that tells with great self-irony, the crisis of a woman who had fallen into a depression. When you are lucky, you live in a kind of golden and illusory world, whose collapse could cause a much more violent backlash compared to those accustomed to "suffer" and to "fight." The protagonist of my story is what is called the evil of the century, depression. The disease, although considered as such, is treated with a heavy dose of cynicism and irony, since the character who is hit is a fragile girl and at the same time lucky, because young, attractive and quite wealthy. Anna never had disappointments in life. He worked in the family studio together with her sister and her future husband. Failure marriage, caused by the affair with her sister and her boyfriend, brings the protagonist of the film to go into depression without having the tools to cope with the changing reality. His life collapses like a house of cards without being supported by any inner strength. The only reaction that befits is to remain in utter sloth, without being able to face the new direction of his way. Its existence is thus marked by long dream escapes and a disarming liabilities that leads her to suffer in full affronts suffered by the external environment. Anna, albeit with a great self-irony that gives to my story the tone of comedy, no longer able to work and have a love life, she passes from one man to another in the hope of meeting those who give her the strength to get out of the gloom of the tunnel from which it was overwhelmed. The medicines that she take regularly and a psychologist, which also exchanges it for another patient, do not give any benefit and the only thing that gives meaning to this debauchery is the illusion of being loved by a man who follow her for work. His meeting with the trickster will give her a vital impetus that will lead to a new inner awareness: the past is past, show must go on. The character of the psychic fully embodies the parody of the illness of depression: you just have confidence in yourself, even if externally induced, and fictitious convictions to react when they have the chance. The Councils concerned of a trickster magician and the love four a man she discovers crook at the end of the story, will bring her conviction of being depressed to change completely. Now that she has something to do and above all to believe in, no longer has the time to think about the disappointments, but you overwhelmed by this feeling of renewal that will take her to forget the failure, moreover, they were also false certainties that had before collapsing psychologically. This trip inside herself, though painful, will bring it to strengthen themselves and finally to undermine the frivolous and unnecessary speculations induced by her family, who had reduced in that state. With this film I want to tell, in a light, in the form of comedy, a generation flawed and devoid of ideals and emotional impulses that have as a common denominator the risk of falling into the terrible abyss of depression. The film tries to propose, a possible solution. The artistic choice to bring the film to have the comedic tone is dictated by the fact that I felt the need to deal with a subject like depression, ironically, to find a way to tell it more original and less tragic as it has been addressed in cinema.