Misunderstood

"Returning home, you will find your children: give your children a caress.” (Pope John XXIII)

This film takes the form of a memory album. Like opening a collection of twenty-year-old photographs and leafing through them one by one, and looking at that soft, diffused light that May days can have, where the sun seems like it will never set. "Incompresa" is a text that narrates a dominant and radical subjectivity, that of a nine-year-old girl. I searched within my own childhood to build hers; that's why I set the film in the 1980s, when I too was a child. The story echoes the two Bergmanian elements of fairy tale and coming-of-age novel; a coming-of-age, however, that is impossible, because where in the classic "bildungsroman" the child must be ferried into adulthood, around our protagonist the adult world is a bit tragedy and a bit farce. "Incompresa" therefore presents itself as a reverse coming-of-age novel, in which it is above all the adults who need to be formed, or perhaps de-formed, deconstructed. It is their adult armor that they should shed and return to being children, sometimes. If I “stole” dramaturgical structures from Bergman, it is to Truffaut – from "The 400 Blows," to be precise – that I look for inspiration in portraying the child's relationship with the city. Rome – like Antoine Doinel's Paris – is the enchanted forest where escapes are realized, where the meaning of the word freedom is found. Wandering through the city's neighborhoods alone was a luxury that existed in the 80s, we of my generation remember it well, but today it has been completely lost. As I said at the beginning, I would like this film to have the form of a memory album, of Polaroids – this is the inspiration that Nicola Pecorini, the director of photography, and I drew from. To recreate that feeling given by lowered blinds with atmospheric dust dancing in the air. Regarding the set design (Eugenia Di Napoli) and costumes (Nicoletta Ercole), we tried to avoid making a "costume film," but something realistic, with minimal touches that recall the era without forcing it. Childhood plays a fundamental role for me; after all, my previous film also spoke of childhood. The ideal viewer of "Incompresa" is the child, not just the young human being, but the child within each of us. It is to that sacred part of the individual that I wanted to speak; what I mean is exactly the opposite of Pascoli's "fanciullino," who seemed to have been dead forever; I am interested in the cheerful, lively, and vibrant child, curious and a little naive, capable of communicating, learning, and having fun, the one who must be saved and cherished throughout life, the one who must be fascinated rather than "educated." It is to the child hidden inside every adult that I address myself.