Shelter

Colour, 35 mm
Italy, France, 2007, 100 min
Section: Focus on New Italian Directors

Synopsis

Lesbian partners Anna and Mara are returning home from an exotic holiday. While they are still on their way back, Anna discovers a young Moroccan in the boot of the car. Like thousands of others, Anis is trying to get into Europe in order to find work and have a chance of a better life. The girls take him in and look after him like a younger brother. Anna finds him work in the warehouse of the family firm, a shoe factory where Mara also works on the shop floor. However, the sense of mutual solidarity is destroyed as soon as this fragile community is faced with serious problems. The destructive avalanche is caused by the distraught Mara after the death of her father, and it immediately becomes apparent that the threesome were only being held together by their awareness of being different from other people. The film tells a story of intimacy, yet the way in which it treats the theme of the lesbian relationship, dismissed by the close families of both women, edges it towards the socio-critical genre. The latter is also underscored by the film’s contemplation of the precarious position of ordinary labourers, of unemployment and, above all, the causes of the disenchantment of immigrants from the Third World.

About the director

Marco Simon Puccioni (b. 1963, Rome) studied architecture (graduating in 1989) and subsequently won a Fulbright scholarship and went to study film direction at UCLA in the United States. He has considerable experience in documentary filmmaking and, along with several short documentaries, he has also made four feature-length films. He then debuted in 2002 with the feature film What You Are Looking For (Quello che cerchi). His films generally confirm his interest in political and social themes, and his need also to examine the problems underlying gender identity. The latter underlines his second feature film Shelter, where the social status of the characters is fundamentally projected into their personal relationships. Puccioni also experiments with film language. He teaches film direction at the academy in Perugia.