Manuela, a thirteen-year-old girl who’s lived all her life in Librino, a typically bleak neighbourhood on the outskirts of Catania, one day pretends that she can perform miracles.
People desperately want to believe her and she, whose only real interests are cutting out paper women for her collages, going to the seaside with her boyfriend and dreaming dreams inhabited by candyfloss-haired women who finally let her comb their hair and also by rotund ever-smiling welcoming mothers, suddenly finds herself being treated almost like a saint.
From that moment on, she is inundated with hungry and needy people asking her for all sorts of help: from a lost job to a lottery win, from a dream that never comes true to a change of personality and, hopefully, of life. While her mother Rita sees the business potential, Manuela observes and looks on with incredulous eyes while everyone parades before her like puppets gone mad… She gets scared and would like to give up being a saint. But it’s not so easy. Because, in spite of herself, a real miracle does actually happen. –Venice Film Festival
Roberta Torre was born in Milan in 1962. She started studying Philosophy. She studied at the Accademia d’Arte Dramatica Paolo Grassi before becoming a film director. Music is very important to her, and is a central element of several of her films such as “Tano da morire” (1997), her first fiction feature which was screened in the Critics’ Week at the Venice Festival. The film won numerous awards, including the Donatello for Best Director Debut. —Sevilla Festival de Cine
