Country: Italy
Year: 2026
Duration: 17'
The green countryside holds the secrets of Vera and Michy, both twelve years old and lifelong best friends. In the intimacy of an abandoned house, they read through erotic comics to discover a world still completely unknown to them. During this summer, Vera is experiencing her first relationship with Mattia. As the boy and his friends enter the girls’ world, it begins to unravel and a fight between Michy and Mattia escalates into violence. Faced with what has happened, Vera is left disoriented and helpless, unable to fully process what she has just witnessed. Tension builds within her, while doubts begin to overwhelm her. But her body holds all the answers that she seeks.
Biography
film director
Gaia Longobardi
(Italy) holds a BA in Multimedia Arts from NABA in Milan and attended the Creare Storie master’s program at ANICA Academy, the Locarno REAL Academy on Cinema of the real, and Radicante, a transmedia and transfeminist school. She wrote and directed the short films Condominio N°IMX172 made under the supervision of Michelangelo Frammartino and presented at Filmmaker Fest, and Salicornia selected at Cineteca di Bologna’s Visioni Italiane. With a focus on the connection between visual art and secondary education, she curated the UNICEF Young Adults section for Lago Film Fest. Since 2024 she has worked at Kino Produzioni, where she develops and researches projects by emerging voices.
FILMOGRAFIA
Condominio N°IMX172 (doc, cm, 2022), Salicornia (cm, 2024), V+M (cm, 2026).
Declaration
film director
“There are memories that won’t go down, that come back undigested. In the spring of 2012, I wonder who the protagonist was in a hazy episode I lived through: what she was thinking, how she acted, and why? Past images resurface without me being able to grasp them, insistently demanding clarity. I remember very little: an afternoon on a swing, my best friend’s initials carved into a tree, and then him, them, a wrist pressed against a fence. During a time like pre-adolescence, when sex is a taboo to be explored in secret, the characters in books take on a physicality far removed from what you imagined, and this transformation is something you can share only with your best friend. In the short film, Vera’s eyes take in the contradictions of this world: the disappointments of unmet fairy-tale expectations, replaced by truths that are inexplicably harsher. The camera aligns with the protagonist’s gaze, moving through and observing the settings alongside her, reflecting the same voids created by her mind.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR: Gaia Longobardi. SCREENPLAY: Gaia Longobardi, Livia Stramaccioni. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Pietro Gobbi. EDITING: Matteo Boscolo Gioachina. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Chiara Carpanese. MUSIC, SOUND: Giulia Mattavelli. CAST: Bianca Galati, Penelope Flamma, Aaron Guey, Dario Naglieri, Filippo Maria Pierangeli, Gioele Varese. PRODUCTION: Davide Secchi, Marta Cannone, Simone Ligabò per Capolinea Film. COPRODUCTION: Kublai Film, Jaja Film, Ferrago Studio, Gaia Longobardi. CONTACT: Alice Gambara, Nieminen Film alice.gambara@nieminenfilm.it
