Breath

Colour, 35mm
France, Italy, 2002, 90 min
Section: Forum of Independents

Synopsis

Lampedusa, an island near western Sicily. The men go out to sea and the wives work in the fish-packing plant. Fun is restricted to Saturday nights. Time seems to stand still on this island. For some, village life can be as suffocating as it is charming... Grazia is a loving wife and the affectionate young mother of a teenage girl and two boys. But her free spirit sets the entire village gossiping. Her husband, Pietro, stands by Grazia, but pressure from the rest of his family and the whole community is too strong. He agrees that Grazia must be sent to a psychiatric clinic in far-away Milan. But Grazia finds another solution: with the help of her 13-year-old son Pasquale, she runs away from home... This unusually strong drama, full of what are almost barbaric images, is set against a backdrop of breath-taking natural surroundings and uses mostly non-professional actors speaking the local dialect. 

About the director

Emanuele Crialese (1965, Rome) studied film in New York, where he also directed his first feature, Once We Were Strangers (1999), a film shot in English which was subsequently selected for many festivals, including Sundance. Respiro, his second film, was made in Italy.