Rosa Maietta

The panorama of human affairs encounters the “man with a movie camera”. His playground has no boundaries, his curiosity no limits. Characters, situations and places pitch camp in the life of a humanity that is at once the viewer and the thing viewed. But what are the last days of this humanity? Have they already passed? Are they now or still to come?

The records of the Naples State Archives conceal the lives of women whose voices reach us from the past like a siren’s song. Neapolitan director Rosa Maietta recounts the stories of these long-forgotten women through court rulings, expert reports, and unearthed memorabilia: Linda, who—pregnant with the child of a man she fell in love with while her husband was at the front—chooses to have an abortion to avoid disgrace; Emma, a subversive worker whose opposition to fascism led to exile and imprisonment; Giovannina, the victim of a possessive and violent boyfriend. The film literally plunges into the files preserved in the Naples State Archives, weaving together a narrative that finally gives these women—and their stories—a voice they were never granted.