This film is a very personal account of moments lived by the director with her father. A personal account, yet told with the proper distance, in that cinema is ever-present between father and daughter: as a passion, a life choice, and a way of being in the world. Cinema as a web that underlies the story of their exchanges and creates a space for imagination. “With cinema,” the father says, “you can escape. With your own mind”. Images are sparked by memories and like memories amplify a few notable markers while erasing others. Spare images, where there is hardly anything other than the two of them, and the marker that is present always has something monstrous about it: large things are exceptionally large; distant things are incredibly far; sunbeams are ablaze; nearby things are much too close. As for the movie sets, however, everything is in excess: confusion, urgency, people, noise—and everything here is also amplified. In these sets is the thrill of communal life. The ones featured in the film are those of Pinocchio, built in the middle of nowhere in the barren countryside.

the plot of which unfolds in 1900. Lili d’Alengy, a Parisian courtesan at the height of her fame, flees Paris in order to conceal her daughter, who has been deemed an “idiot”. After arriving in Rome, her life is turned upside down when she meets a female doctor who has developed a method of helping intellectually challenged children: Maria Montessori. However, if she wishes to publicly embody the donna nuova, or “new woman”, a modern, emancipated lady, she must pay the price – motherhood out of wedlock and kept under wraps. Soon, she will be forced to choose between her child and her destiny.