Known for Acting
The Hidden Sea combines cinema, theater and documentary. Freely inspired by Saint-Exupéry’s fable, The Little Prince, this film tells the story of a young immigrant’s journey through the faces and wounds of Southern Italy. An attempt to reclaim his own history and perhaps his own future. But he is not alone on this journey. The narrator’s words are in fact confused with those of the many characters encountered and above all with the voice of the places crossed. The Hidden Sea is a reflection on the saving power of art.
Seventies. In the unprecedented setting of an arbëresh community (the Albanians of Italy) in a small town nestled in the hills of Ionian Calabria, Marco, a thirteen-year-old boy, finds himself having to manage a complicated family situation. By chance he discovers that her sister Elisa, a university student in Cosenza, has a reaction with a married man much older than her.
On the night before his retirement, police lieutenant Franco Amore is called to investigate the death of a long-time partner of his in a diamond heist in which he was involved.
Set in 1970s Rome, the fiction tracks the plight of a nuclear family, consisting of an unhappy married couple: Clara (a deeply dissatisfied expatriate Spaniard) and Felice (an abusive businessman cheating on Clara with his secretary) and their children Adriana, Gino, and Diana. Their eldest child, 12-year-old Adriana, experiences gender dysphoria; he rejects girlhood and instead goes by the name of Andrea (a primarily masculine name in Italian). Andrea develops a crush for Sara, a Roma girl who knows him as a boy. Upon a shared sense of being outsiders, Andrea and Clara grow closer.
Giacomo and Samuele, two young boys, were born and grew up in a small town in south Italy. Although it overlooks the open sea, it is a close-minded town. In this ancient town, the two boys quickly develop a strong bond, which goes beyond friendship. They secretly commit themselves to escaping to a place where they can freely express their feelings.
