La Pivellina Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel

Patrizia and Walter, an elderly couple of circus performers, live in a caravan outside the city. Their life has its everyday routine, until something quite unusual happens: Patrizia, who is looking for her dog, instead finds a little abandoned child, 2-year old Asia. Finding a desperate note in the girl’s pocket, she brings the child home and decides to take care of her, hoping her mother will appear. In spite of Walter’s first reaction to inform the police, everybody soon becomes charmed by the little thing, including Walter himself. It gets harder and harder to imagine leaving her.

Far from the lifestyle of la dolce vita, this young Italian-Austrian directing duo’s first feature is a deeply natural, neo-realistic story about a particular way of life in Italy. The atmosphere is composed of grey walls and empty, disconsolate encampments, accentuated by unsettling steadycam shots. Little by little, one realizes that the characters are not interpreted by professional actors. Instead, all the protagonists are part of a real circus. While living on the breadline already in their real lives, they now have to face a difficult human situation as well, which requires them to stick together more than ever.

Laura Talvet