A woman gives voice to Annie Ernaux' "The years" text, a few collected fragments on the shores of a timeless Sardinia.

Neither the words, nor the images, drawn from the family films, are expected to complete the narration of her story: places from her past. The mountains on the coast, a seascape, gardens, terraces, rooms of an apartment emerge like reflections of a fragmented and ever-changing memory, uncovered by a new light. The details in each gesture, in each face, of scenes of a life lived amongst family, re-assembled and freed from their original context, become expressive elements of a confession that is both personal discovery and collective narration.

At Re-framing Home Movies, Cineteca Sarda's residency in Cagliari, I went over private amateur film archives which were, for the most part, never been used.

When I completed the selection, I started working on the archival founds, narrowing it down to around thirty for my film. Some time after, while reading Annie Ernaux's "The Years" I found the perfect story for the audio and visual score I was costructing.

The selection of some fragments of this text, pushed me towards adding a voice that became key for the narration and also to film, myself, some sequences in Super 8 film, from an imaginary present archive.

Then, I started working on what appeared as a real vertigo, not time but its imagination: what it means to feel it, to give it life, to feel all time that has been and that is now and that will be. And on adult life's privilege to assist to the running out of days, without any nihilism or any resentment.

The voice and images form a representation of a vibrant scenery that develops new meanings. Bodies and shadows, small objects and landscapes from the past compose the verses in the story of a life, like a renewed promise, placed in the exchange between archive and words: “All the things she has buried as shameful and which are now worthy of retrieval, unfolding, in the light of intelligence. As her memory is gradually freed of humiliation, the future again becomes a field of action” (A.Ernaux)

Director and Film editor. Sara was the first Italian to receive the Rolex Arts Prize for Film in 2012-2013 and she worked under the mentorship of Walter Murch in New York. She directed several short films and founded Avventurosa, an independent film production company, with Pietro Marcello, with whom she has worked over 10 years as film editor, researcher and producer. She also collaborated among others with A. Sokurov, F. Maresco and G. Rosi.