ZaLab Film

Stuck in his hometown, Venice, during the pandemic, director Andrea Segre turns the camera on the frozen city, while reminiscing about his father, a scientist and chemist, and the past.

Brescia, March 2020. The Spedali Civili, the city's public hospital, suddenly finds itself inundated with patients. In the best tradition of direct cinema, Michele Aiello manages to document a moving slice of life, and to film, at the worst moments of this collective tragedy, the unprecedented reports that unite patients and health personnel in the face of the unknown.

When the past re-emerges, it can prove to be uncontrollable and become another present, the here and now of a space that is contemporaneously clear-cut and indefinite, suspended within a frame of mind that can take your breath away. The movie is a journey inside this dimension, as it recounts what it means to cross this threshold and teeter between unexpected tears and sudden laughter. A reflection on old age and what you can discover by looking at yourself in this mirror, the film is the outcome of a long process of listening and dozens of lengthy encounters in five regions in Italy, in search of yesterday’s world, that sometimes seems very far away and sometimes strangely present.

Chioggia, Southern part of the Venice Lagoon, 5am. Like every day Andrea is on a boat with Michele his grandfather and Cristian his father, to fish sea urchins, a delicacy they sell at the wholesale fish market. This is how Andrea who is 14, decided to spend his summer holidays this year, to learn a trade that his family has been practising for decades. Facing his first experiences in the lagoon, Andrea discovers one of his possible futures.