Weightless
Date:
January 9, 2023
Weightless
Looking for gap financing, festival release,
sales agent
Logline
The deceptions of memory push a sixty-year-old man to a fierceinner battle with himself.
Synopsis
GIAN, a 65-years-old ethnomusicology professor, fights the darkness caused by a sudden amnesia.
Flashes of the past, with hazy archive footage, haunt his mind like a phantasmagoria of images.
Despairing, Gian tries to end his life, but he fails.
In the aftermath, MIRIAM (30), the daughter he does not recognize, moves in his apartment with her son ELYAS (5). She helps him find a diary written in his twenties that revolves around LEILA, a girl with whom he discovers love in the space of one night. This emotion exacerbates Gian’s pain but invites him to recover his memory. Who is this woman who was that important in his past life? What happened to her? How is it possible that he forgot such intense and intimate moments shared with her? Gian’s unmoored present-day life is gradually replaced by the vivid images of that past. He will be able to find himself again and to experience a revelation…
What is the mechanism that moves our memories? What happens
if we forget the love of our life?
And, conversely: what if they forget us?
Director’s Profile
Sara Fgaier is an italian-tunisian filmmaker, born in La Spezia in 1982. She graduated in Film History And Criticism from the University of Bologna. Sara then continued her film training in Marco Bellocchio’s directing school for a year (2005-2006). She received the Rolex Arts Prize for Film in 2012, thanks to it she worked under the mentorship of Walter Murch in New York for one year. Since 2013, she directed several short films. In 2014, she made the short film “Humble Italy” (2014, Venice Days) codirected with Pietro Marcello. The film was selected as a Special Event at Venice Days. In 2018, she made ten short films for “History of a friendship”, the adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s My brilliant friend, staged by the theatre company Fanny & Alexander.
Her latest short film “The years” (2018, Horizons, Venice Film Festival) is loosely based on Annie Ernaux’s novel of the same name.
The Horizons jury chose it as a candidate for the European Film Awards and the European Film Academy decided to award it with
the 2018 Best European Short Film Award. The film also won the
Silver Ribbon for Best Documentary Short Film. In 2020, she won
the Underground Spirit Award at the Palić European Film Festival “for her outstanding work in the field of independent film, as well as for a unique approach to film language and authentic authorial poetics built outside the mainstream industry”.
She co-founded Avventurosa, an independent production company, together with Pietro Marcello.
Company Profile
The independent production company Limen was founded in 2023 by Sara Fgaier. Frontier, threshold, home, border, extreme limit, beginning, completion: this is the meaning in Latin of Limen, that we like to tie to the films we develop and produce.
Sara Fgaier produced Pietro Marcello’s film “The mouth of the wolf”
in 2009, founding with the director the cultural association Avventurosa. The film won the Torino film festival, the Caligari and Teddy Awards at the Berlinale, Silver Ribbon and David di Donatello for Best documentary. Her previous credits as a producer also include her EFA-winning short film “The Years” in 2018 and Pietro Marcello’s feature film “Lost and beautiful” premiered in Competition at Locarno film festival.
Founded in 2013, Avventurosa initially produced or co-produced
all of Pietro Marcello’s films before gradually opening up to collaboration with other directors. Among Avventurosa’s first productions were the documentaries “The mouth of the wolf” and “The silence of Pelesjan” which won Pietro Marcello several national and international awards. In 2015 “Lost and beautiful” was presented at the Locarno Film Festival and it also won the Silver Ribbon for best documentary film. In 2019 “Martin Eden”, Pietro Marcello’s first narrative film, was presented at the Venice Film Festival, where its star Luca Marinelli won the Coppa Volpi, it won the Platform Prize Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and received eleven nominations for the David of Donatello, winning the prize for best non-original screenplay. “Martin Eden” also received four nominations for the European Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. In 2021 the collective film “Futura”, co-directed by Francesco Munzi, Pietro Marcello and Alice Rohrwacher, made its debut in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for both the David of Donatello and the Silver Ribbons as best documentary. The same year Avventurosa also produced the documentary “Suole di vento”, a portrait of movie critic Goffredo Fofi directed by Felice Pesoli. In 2022 “Scarlet”, Pietro Marcello’s second narrative film, was presented at the Quinzaine in Cannes.
Dugong Films is a Rome based film production company focused on exploring the blurred line between fiction, documentary and art,
developing projects in an international framework. The company draws its name by the “dugong”, a large marine mammal, who unexpectedly inspirated ancient alluring sea-faring tales of mermaids. Dugong productions have been shown in the most important international festivals.
“Disco boy” by Giacomo Abbruzzese, premiered at 73° Berlinale
Film Festival and winner of the Silver Bear for Outstanding artistic contribution, “Samouni Road” by Stefano Savona, premiered at
2018 Director’s Fortnight in Cannes and winner of the prestigious
Golden Eye Award as Best Documentary and David di Donatello
nominated, “Atlantide” by Yuri Ancarani, selected in competition at
Venice Film Festival – Orizzonti and David di Donatello nominated,
“Tony Driver” by Ascanio Petrini, presented in Venice Critic’s Week
Competition 2020.
Among the shorts produced by Dugong: “Waiting for the rise” by
Lavorato & D’Agostino, winner of the Orizzonti Competition in Venice 2011, “Mon amour mon ami” by Adriano Valerio, selected in
competition in Venice Film Festival 2017 and in Toronto, winner in
Palmspring IFF, “That which is to come is just a promise” by Flatform, selected in Cannes Director’s Fortnight 2018 and winner of the Go Short Competition in Nijmegen, “The years” by Sara Fgaier, selected in Orizzonti Venice Competition 2018 and winner of the European Film Award.