Paolo Baiguera

On the Lazio coast of Coccia di Morto, Kimutai, a young African boy, enjoys the sun on the shore. The illusion of spending a day like everyone else is suddenly interrupted by a trivial misunderstanding; a chain of misunderstandings with the bathers will force Kimutai to find a new center of gravity in the precarious balance between reality and illusion.

In the forests of Fobbia, Claudio spends his days obsessively carving wood. Years earlier, his son disappeared in those same woods. The only thing of him left was the red shirt he was wearing, found under a pine tree. Ever since then, Claudio has been felling trees and carving them, convinced that his son must hide in there somewhere. Between truth and fantasy, Claudio’s story is intertwined with the tale of Pinocchio, here turned upside down.

A family taboo, a missing story. Using 25 photos and the cold readings of artificial intelligence against his mother’s warm memories, a nephew reconstructs the life of Michele, an uncle lost to HIV and heroin in 1980s–90s Italy, exploring memory, the value of images, and what remains unspoken.