Maria Arena

A documentary film about the independent band UZEDA who brought a disruptive sound from Sicily to almost everywhere.

Franchina, Meri, Marcella, Santo, Totino and Wonder are transsexuals who have been prostituting themselves for decades in the San Berillo district of Catania, among them there is also a woman, Alessia. The neighborhood has been left to decay for 50 years and today, more than ever, its parts are contended by increasingly pressing economic interests. Invited by the politician on duty to imagine a different future, shemales call into play desires and fears by attending a course for caregivers. This novelty infiltrates their lives but does not change the rhythms of the particular community of San Berillo in which time is marked by the feasts dedicated to saints and Madonnas rather than the seasons. Between religious faith, love and dreams for a better future the prostitutes of San Berillo recount and claim their rights, present the intimacy of their families and their solitude in front of the door waiting for customers.

Short by Maria Arena.

First-person story of Maria, fifty, wife, mother and worker, who through the encounter with today's feminist practices of the "Non Una Di Meno" movement in Milan, takes stock of being a woman today. Intrigued by the "global women's strike", proclaimed on March 8, 2017 by Non Una Di Meno, Maria participates in the Milanese demonstration. Here for the first time she hears about the "Feminist Plan Against Male Violence Against Women and Gender Violence" that the movement is writing. The plan describes the directions of a necessary change in several fields where a stereotypical and sexist perspective of genders and the power relations between them is replicated that is the basis of the violence that is intended to be overcome.