Here, the steel worker works on a continuous cycle, twenty-four hours a day and never stops. There, by the sea, on the island of Elba, is a paradise so close, yet so unattainable. In the middle, neither here nor there, Anna and Francesca, young but already old, have a friendship as special as love itself. The same love keeps Alessio, Anna´s brother, going. A factory worker to the core, the only girl he wants is Elena, the girl he cannot have. One day love arrives, as powerful as it is unexpected for all, and life suddenly accelerates until it cracks, bleeds and breaks.
"We have gone beyond the wall which contains, hides and stops any assistance given to the hard work of men and women. We have observed the power and the greatness of the machine which transforms, and the man who puts the final touches. We have tried to film the enemy, but while we waited for it to appear, we didn´t find it. The enemy cannot be found inside factories, he is outside of it, far away. As much as we could, we tried to lend a listening ear, we tried to organize the least amount possible, while trying to blur the lines between stage and real life, between recited and lived situations. And then we stopped and met the two girls from the novel, inside their own environments, in their own light, with the clothes they had chosen for themselves, with their own voice tone, their rhythm, their music, their own point of view, and their own words. We did this before starting to film. What happened afterwards was just a consequence. 'Shadow changes position at the same time as light.'" (Stefano Mordini)
Stefano Mordini (Marradi, Florence, Italy, 1968) loves Charles Mingus and cycling. In 1996, he worked on his first project, I ladri, in Venice. In 2000, he shot Paz '77, a documentary on Andrea Pazienza which was presented at the Turin Film Festival. He then made a series of documentaries about globalisation, among which L'allievo modello, selected at the Independent Buenos Aires Film Festival. In 2005, Mordini wrote and made his first feature film Provincia meccanica, in running in Berlin, as well as receiving three nominations for the David awards and two at the Nastri D´Argento. In 2007, he produced and directed Il confine, a documentary based on the Islamic community in Italy. In 2009, he made Come mio padre, a documentary film about fatherhood in Italy from 1950 to today.
