CÙNTAMI

"I'm the film's gaze, its narrator, its voice - and that's because this film is first and foremost my own cùnto of joy and sorrow, dedicated to my childhood and my memories. It's a journey through the stages of life, from its genesis to adulthood and old age: it starts in the amniotic sac in a mother's womb and ends deep underground, or under the sea, where the mythology of my past finds its resting place amidst the ashes of my father and mother. "Heaven is another story", sings Lello Analfino in the song he composed for the end credits of the film. Heaven lies in the power of memory and the stories handed down from one generation to the next, and those stories protect us from deep underground, reminding us that once upon a time will come again. After all, God created man because he loved the stories man told, or so goes the Hasidic saying I used as an epigraph at the end of this film." [Giovanna Taviani]

Giovanna Taviani (Rome, 1969) made her directorial debut at the Torino Film Festival in 2004, with I nostri 30 anni: generazioni a confronto, a documentary about four generations of filmmakers and a portrait of thirty-year-olds working in the Italian film industry today. Her second documentary, Homecomings, the story of three immigrants from the Maghreb who made it and went home, premiered at the Rome Film Fest and received a Special Jury Mention from the Premio Fondazione Libero Bizzarri. The 2011 Venice Film Festival screened her film Fughe e approdi. Ritorno alle Eolie tra cinema e realtà, which went on to receive the Critics' Prize at the Silver Ribbons, the Special Jury Prize at the Annecy Film Festival, and Best Documentary at the Madrid Film Festival. In 2007, Taviani founded the SalinaDocFest - the International Festival of Narrative Documentaries.