Adorazione

In Pontinia, a small town founded under Fascism in the heart of the Agro Pontino, teenager Elena is murdered by her boyfriend. A year later, her friends are still caught between grief and the need for a normal adolescence. Over the course of a sultry summer, spent amid the metaphysical architecture of Pontinia and Latina, the sensuous dunes of Sabaudia and Rome, the big city, on the background, their lives get increasingly intertwined. There is Diana, whose birthmark on her leg makes her feel insecure, and her best friend Vera, who is afraid of nothing. There’s Giorgio, Vera’s brother, who was in love with Elena and never told anyone, and Vanessa, Vera and Giorgio’s cousin and Elena’s best friend. Surrounding them is a community governed by deeply ingrained patriarchal values, where families are held together by hypocrisy and silence. The boys and girls grow up, lose their way and find themselves on their own. They must face emptiness and passion, insecurities and anxiety, the desire for acceptance and approval. Elena’s death takes on a different meaning for each one of them, clashing with their personal history and with their sentimental and sexual education marked by extremes, in which love, tenderness and desire become entangled with humiliation and shame.