Nicole De Leo

It often happens that at the moment of death, transgender individuals are shorn of their identity. Their families are ashamed, the funeral takes place in secret, and on the tomb appears the name the deceased had before their transition, in one stroke nullifying the entire life path they had chosen. The same thing happened to Antonia. Her girlfriends gather to honor her memory and give her back her identity denied. In telling her story, the film’s stars, all drawn from the variegated transgender world, interweave the narrative with tales of their own lives, experiences, and memories.

The film is freely inspired by the great actress Monica Vitti, but it is in no way a biopic. It is the story of a woman named Monica, who loses her memory and regains meaning in her life.

In Torino, a bittersweet crowd is bringing its own belongings to a pawn shop, waiting for a ransom or the final auction. Between the thousands of faces that tell the human inventory of the crisis, three stories intertwine unconsciously in the thin line of moral debt. Sandra, a young trans, in order to escape her past sells her fur coat. Her gaze will cross Stefano’s, a novice who just started working at the bank, and who drags her towards a tender obsession. Michele, a retired porter, asks for a loan to a family member, who will turn out to be fatally the wrong person to ask a favour from.

On the edge of a road that leads out of town, some Nigerian prostitutes pass the time on sagging sofas, bargaining with white clients for their bodies and their thoughts. On another street, some Slavic boys wait to be hired as bricklayers, but they are willing to do any kind of work. At night, an Egyptian works as an illegal in a gas station.