Anna Maria De Luca

Marta, a single mother promised to an older farmer in the aftermath of WWII, forges an unlikely friendship with Lorenzo, the village's openly gay "wedding planner." In the conservative backdrop of rural Southern Italy, Lorenzo introduces her to a hidden community of gays, sparking Marta's journey to challenge societal prejudices. In the first year of women's suffrage in Italy, Marta navigates her evolving role as a woman, breaking barriers and finding her place in a changing world.

Antonio is a forty-five-year-old Calabrian charcoal burner who still lives with his father, a gruff and sometimes violent figure. In the background, there's a pervasive sense of job insecurity, highlighting absence as a universal condition

Fatima is 16 years old and wears a veil. Her culture requires it, and her mother Amina imposes it on her. Born in Calabria to Muslim parents, the girl experiences all the conflicts and emotions typical of her age, but feels she is not like her peers: she is closed in her solitude, constantly out of place. Until one day the physical education teacher, Michele Scimone, suggests his students to sign up for the Sant'Antonio Marathon. For Fatima it is the first real opportunity to be seized. But for the teacher, a shy and depressed former runner, tormented by an unresolved past and a failed relationship with Anna, the veil that Fatima wears is a cause of prejudice.

Two young boys, Valerio and Christian, form a powerful friendship over the summer.

Where is the line between memory and reality? Michele returns to his hometown "Rutunn'" after many years and as an old man. Walking through the streets of his village he arrives at his old house, where memories emerge from the silence and dust: his son still young, his wife, music from another era and a terrace overlooking a limitless horizon. He sinks into the memory, he lives it as if it was all happening here and now. However, he has never been able to return to that house.

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.

What would happen today in a society which defines itself Catholic and Christian if Jesus really came back as announced in the Gospels? Who would take him seriously? And what difficulties would Jesus encounter today to be recognized?

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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.