Projects

Weightless

The deceptions of memory push a sixty-year-old man to a fierce battle with himself.

synopsis

Gian, a 65-year-old ethnomusicology professor, fights the darkness caused by the sudden onset of amnesia. Flashes of the past, that blend with hazy archive footage, haunt his mind like a phantasmagoria of images. Despairing, Gian tries to end things, but he fails. In the aftermath, Miriam (30), the daughter he does not recognize, moves into 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 pushes him to recover his memory. Who is this woman who was so important in his life? What happened to her? How is it possible that he forgot? 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’statement

Through the search for his memories, Gian tackles a universal question: do we really exist without love? Is Love the ultimate mirror of one's existence? Is it the single tool for understanding who we really are and give meaning to our lives? Taking the topos of amnesia as a starting point, the film investigates the relationship between memory and love and between who we are and who we once were. It is by losing himself that Gian is able to find a path to self-knowledge, to experience a revelation: forgetting was the only way to elude what had always been in front of his eyes and that only now he is brave enough to see and comprehend. Struggling to remember the face and then the story of Leila, he discovers his hidden desires and emotions. Like a modern Orpheus, Gian wants to stop turning back and, somehow, to grasp hold of the memory of his beloved, measuring up to the most difficult task: losing someone and learning to find them again.

TFL PROGRAMME:
FeatureLab 2022
Discover more details here:
Download
PDF
TFL Catalogue 2022
TFL AWARDS:

TFL Production Award (€ 40,000)

All the updates once a month in your mailbox, subscribe to the TFL newsletter.