Lievito madre: Le ragazze del secolo scorso

Aging fashion model Benedetta Barzini strives to escape the world of images and disappear for good, but her son’s determination to make a final film about her sparks an unexpected collaboration and confrontation with the camera’s gaze.

The Disappearance of My Mother

Asiago Plateau, 1918, a few days before the surrender of the Italian-Austrian front. An Austro-Hungarian soldier crosses the enemy line. He is very young and scared. There is not a single soul on the entire plateau goes along: it seems that the war has moved elsewhere, but where it was, it left behind destruction and death. He tries to forget the terrible experience of the war by recalling imaginative childhood memories that show a deep attachment to the nature that is present everywhere around him. On his way, the natural beauty of the foreign land alleviates the sense of fear that accompanies him. Death comes as a salvation to take him into the mystical world of nature, just like in his childhood dreams. The soldier's name is Peter Pan. He fell in September 1918, and rests in grave 107 of the Monte Grappa Military Shrine in the Austro-Hungarian section.