Marco Mingolla

Tartuca is the intimate and heartbreaking story of the bond between Alice, a fifteen-year-old girl, and her Congolese nanny, Lelo. After more than ten years spent in a suffocating bourgeois family unable to express love, Lelo decides to quit her job. Their separation opens a crack that reveals the family's emotional dysfunctions and the silent need for freedom, care, and genuine affection. It is a story of separation, but also of revelation: when healthy love becomes the only way out.

On the last evening before her departure, Vera is putting her small sister to bed. To hide the real reason for her leaving, she tells her a bedtime fairy tale instead. It’s the story of a city swallowed by an eternal night, where little by little everyone, adapting to the darkness, starts turning into owls. As the tale unfolds, it becomes clear that Vera, too, is part of the story.