Federica, a great theatre actress, has breast cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. Her husband works as a volunteer in a community of young people undergoing crack detoxification. To react to the little time she may have left to live, Federica decides to set up a theatre workshop with the young people in the community. The encounter between Federica's world and the small world of the community creates an outburst in everyone. The sudden news of an unexpected remission provokes conflicting and confused feelings in Federica. She feels an unconfessable anguish, as if the illness and the idea of death had given her freedom, and she fears that recovery will throw her back into the prison of her former life. A young man from the community, giving her an unexpected kiss with no future, will make carefree happiness possible again.
From the very first moment the director first told us about the project she was beginning to conceive, we were fascinated by the idea of this film. Valeria's previous films, such as Les Amandiers and I Villeggianti, were based on strong autobiographical elements, whose experiences were reworked into cinematic narratives and mixed with fiction. This combination allowed her to express herself effectively on themes and worlds she knew well. For this film, the process was reversed and particularly original: it started from fiction, or rather from an imaginary autobiography in which Valeria fantasised about a parallel life in which she remained in Turin and became a theatre actress instead of a film actress. There is therefore an autobiographical component, so much so that the protagonist will be played by Valeria herself, suggesting to the viewer that not everything they see is pure fantasy. Added to this is the fact that Valeria has tragic first-hand experience of addiction and detox centres, how they work and the psychological dynamics that characterise the behaviour of the unfortunate people who inhabit these places. This gives the story an additional element of truth, without hiding behind useless and superficial moralising but seeking to investigate the inner lives of the film's characters.
All this has been placed in a real-life context, namely the “Centro crisi” detox centre, part of the Abele community founded by Don Ciotti, whom Valeria has met several times, thus further exploring these issues.The screenplay was written by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and her co-author Agnès De Sacy, with whom she wrote her previous films, which were screened internationally and participated in major festivals (Venice and Cannes). The writing team is enriched by the collaboration of Valia Santella, who recently wrote the screenplay for L'arte della Gioia (The Art of Joy), which starred Bruni Tedeschi. The story intertwines reality and fiction, cinema and theatre, seeking to propose a new language with respect to the mixture of these elements. It uses a choral structure that articulates the cinematic language in such a way as to be able to range widely and explore the numerous themes dealt with in the screenplay.
