LE COSE DA LONTANO

Two women from Paraguay, convicted of drug trafficking, are serving time in two jails in Northern Italy. There are many smugglers like them, men and women arriving by plane from countries in Latin America, Africa, or Eastern Europe.

“Things from Afar is a documentary built on two interviews made by an anthropologist to Paraguayan women serving drug trafficking sentences in Italian jails. They refused to appear on screen, so the only material I could start working with were audio recordings. I never saw a single photo of these women, and I’ve never been to Paraguay. The only thing I knew of them was their voice and the life they depicted through their stories. I didn’t want their words to be accompanied by descriptive images; I wanted them to be independent, to have a strength of their own: as if they came from each of their subconscious, flowing into to a stream of consciousness made of memories, nostalgia, anger, that materialize as their stories progress.”