cinematography
Massimo Intoppa
Luciano Usai
editing
Nicola Moruzzi
music
Tony Carnevale
sound
Francesco Morosini

with
Vakhim Borra
Maklin Tosi
Simone Borra
Francesca Pirani
Yon Neang
(Vakhim and Maklin’s birth mother)
Chandara So
(Cambodian producer)
Vannak Soeung
(Vakhim’s mother)
Kimhour Ly
(Vakhim child)
Sreyneth Un
(Maklin bambina Maklin child)
Mengfery Lav
(Brother of Vakhim and Maklin)
Sreyna Un
(Little brother of Vakhim and Maklin)
voice
Lavinia Mancusi

producer
Luca Criscenti
creative producer
Stefano Viali
production
Land Comunicazioni
with the support of
MiC – Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo

Italian press office
Gargiulo&Polici Communication
licia@gargiulopolici.com
francesca@gargiulopolici.com
www.gargiulopolici.com

Adopted in Cambodia when he was four years old, Vakhim came to Italy in 2008. He only spoke Khmer and everything he saw was unfamiliar, but he was a cheerful child and to fit in, he put any traces of his short first life out of mind, though not entirely. His older sister, Maklin, is in Italy, too, and a few years later a letter arrives: Vakhim’s birth mother is asking after him. Francesca and Simone, his adoptive parents, decide to go look for her.

2024 Vakhim
2022 D’annunzio. l’uomo che inventò sé stesso
(doc, co-directed with Stefano Viali)
2017 BEO (doc, co-directed with Stefano Viali)
2002 Una bellezza che non lascia scampo
1997 L’appartamento

“[…] The reconstructions of Vakhim and Maklin’s memories from Cambodia are more film-like, while the depiction of their journey is rendered in a totally realistic style, as is the narrative of the atmosphere on the film set itself: the siblings’ moods, the news of their biological mother and the first contacts with her, up to the emotional encounter with the woman herself. These two different narrative planes constantly shift from fiction to reality and from the past in Cambodia to the present in Italy, lending truth to the images on the screen but also different layers of interpretation. The aim is not linear storytelling, but a narrative that adapts to the flexibility of one’s inner world, in which time expands and shrinks and expands again, ceaselessly reshuffling sensations, memories, and unexpected associations in order to recreate an image of that invisible reality, alternately preserved in the child’s memory, then his memory as an adult.” (Francesca Pirani)

Francesca Pirani holds a degree in film criticism and the history of film from the l’Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”. She continued her studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica “Silvio D’Amico”. On the film front, she got her start as an AD for Marco Bellocchio on The Witches’ Sabbath (1988), which she also co-wrote, and on his The Butterfly’s Dream (1994). In 1997, Pirani made her feature directorial debut with L’appartamento, the first installment in a projected series of four films entitled Un altro paese nei miei occhi, about immigration to Italy. Five years later, she directed the film Una bellezza che non lascia scampo. In 2017, she co-directed the documentary BEO with Stefano Viali. More recently, she teamed up with Viali again to co-direct D’Annunzio. l’uomo che inventò se stesso (2022). For television, Pirani has made several documentaries together with Carlo Lizzani.