'On the earth light'' by Italian-Tunisian director Sara Fgaier was well received during its screening at the 35e edition of the Carthage Cinematographic Days, which ended with the proclamation of the winners on Saturday December 21, 2024.
Screened in the Diaspora section, this co-production of Limen, Avventurosa, Dugong Films with Rai Cinema and the support of MiC, ''Light on earth'' is a film about loss and the sometimes desperate attempt to find what has been lost: a memory, a love, but also an era from the past.
Gian, a 65-year-old ethnomusicology professor, struggles with the darkness brought on by sudden amnesia.
Haunted by fragments of the past, which emerge in his mind with the grainy appearance of images from distant archives, he receives from his daughter Miriam, treated as a stranger, a diary that he wrote at twenty years old.
Gian realizes that everything revolves around Leila, the Franco-Tunisian with whom he discovered love in the space of one night on an Italian beach, bonding with her through a promise of a future a thousand times awaited, a thousand times unfulfilled. Who is this woman who had such importance in his life? Where is she now? How could he have forgotten it?
The investigation awakens his memory, making him return to the first scene of the film, that of mourning celebrated with oriental notes of scented teas and flower-shaped candies.
Through his past and thanks to his deep love for women, Gian has the strength to rediscover himself as a father and to accept himself as a widower, facing the most difficult test: accepting having lost someone and learn to find it.
“The search for the protagonist is a struggle with memories to try to save from oblivion the army of who we are and who we have been. It is not a question of reconstructing the past but of discovering it, striving to be up to the greatest difficult test: losing someone and learning to find them again.Fgaier told the Italian agency Ansa.
Sara Fgaier holds a degree in cinema history and criticism from the University of Bologna (Italy). For a year, she worked in New York, under the tutelage of Walter Murch.
She directed the short film ''The Landing'' (2013), the medium-length film ''Arturo’’ (2014) et ‘‘The humble Italy''selected at the Venice Film Festival (2014) which she co-directed with Pietro Marcello.
She founded Avventurosa, an independent film production company, with Pietro Marcello with whom she worked for over 10 years. And was a librarian, first assistant director and editor on several successful Italian films.
‘‘Light on the earth'' (2024) is his first feature film presented in competition at the Locarno Film Festival.
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