Valentina Merli

Two People Exchanging Saliva

In a farcical world where kissing is punishable by death, a personal shopper threatens the status quo.

The Ties

Naples, early 1980s. The strained marriage between Aldo and Vanda is fractured one evening when Aldo admits, unprompted, his infidelity. Equally hurt and bewildered, Vanda attempts to hide her pain from the couple's two school-age kids, lest they discover that their cramped apartment is not a home of trust and love. 30 years later, Aldo and Vanda are still tied together, but their relationship with each other and their children continues to be defined by what happened all those years ago.

1998 - 2018

"1998" arises from the diary written by a thirteen-and-half-year-old girl for her best friend, another girl, during the summor of 1998. The film visits the house, garden, and setting where the diary was written and where the female narrator spent her all her summer vacations until 2018. A text, a voice, a setting where we follow the tale of a summer and the intensity of the relationship with her best and adored friend.

Love Torn in a Dream

A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.