The Missing Star

The gay experience in 20th century Italy.

After a kidnapping a boy is kept in the family castel to protect him. But the situation is not easy

School registers are made to record the students' absences and grades. But not all students are equal, not all of them are given the same opportunities. In this journey lasting over a century, teachers, children, parents from every part of Italy reconstruct the history of compulsory schooling, and their personal experiences, great expectations and deeply-felt disappointments.

A retired lawyer becomes friends with a young wife who has just moved in the adjacent apartment with her family.

The enthusiasms, fears, joys and disappointments of the (private and professional) life of a well-known group of boys fond of physics and mathematics, who just made history as the Via Panisperna boys.

Tommaso Scalia is a man who commits three murders: he killed his superior who sacked him, he kills the man who replaced him, and he kills his own wife. He wants a quick trial and an early execution, but an earnest, principled assistant judge looks for a way to save the murderer from being shot, because he does not belive in capital punishment. Although he manages to save the man initially, he will pay a high price for it.

We entered "someone else's home" with fear of being a disturbance. We didn't want to peer into a wounded territory with the eyes of the merely curious. The inhabitants of Amatrice, the few that are left, opened the door to us, greeted us without tears, offered us their hospitality and affection. One year after from earthquake, the pain is receding and people are thinking about rebuilding. But the rubble has not been cleared. It takes time, they say. And the future, perhaps, is still far away.