Aurelio Buchwalder

At the age of 16, Alice was a victim of abuse. Fifty years later, this repressed experience unexpectedly makes its way back into her conscience. How is it possible to repress an incident for one’s entire life? How did it happen that she made films and wrote books always about children and violence? Alice walks with her accordion through the desert, searching for answers, looking at a phenomenon that affects many women in a similar or related way.

For a hundred years, the former fishing village of Campione d'Italia, an Italian enclave in Switzerland, has drawn enormous wealth from a monumental casino. There is hardly a resident who has not benefited economically or socially from it. But the bankruptcy of this colossus destroys all prospects and autonomy. The reopening gives the village one last chance.

We enter the film, like we access Gorgona, by the sea. A rock bristling with greenery, surrounded by the dark blue waves of the Mediterranean. On this small island between Tuscany and Corsica, there is an agricultural penal colony. The prisoners held there are free to move around, working the vines, the small pig farm or the vegetable garden surrounding the prison buildings. Here, the relationship to nature is particular and undoubtedly redeeming.

Daughters, sons, mothers and fathers want to break the decades-long silence in their families. They search for files, go to archives, rummage through documents and study photo albums. They come up against powerful authorities, prejudices, overburdened families and desperate struggles of mothers for their children.

The everyday life of midwives unfolds on the threshold where new life is born and life may fade away. The film shows how midwives support couples during pregnancy and birth. It lets us participate in the balancing act between a safe and a perfect birth.

How do you cope if things turn out differently than you'd imagined? Helena (19) and Jonas (11) are people in great need of support, putting their parents, families, schools and society to the test. The film breaks down the wall that separates them from our world, shows how language and community develop - and asks the question of who we are.