SYNOPSIS
One year after she started her gender transition, Marina spends a summer weekend at the house of her best friend, Camilla. Everyone tells Marina how beautiful she has become, but she doesn’t feel like that. Instead, she constantly compares her body to Camilla’s, that she observes and portrays on her notebook. The arrival at the house of an impetuous male presence, with Lorenzo and his friends, will put to hard test Marina, Camilla and the friendship between them.
DIRECTOR
Paoli De Luca (1999) was born in Naples and grew up in the suburbs of Portici. After classical studies in their hometown, they graduated with honors from the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, where they developed the photonovel Fera (2018), presented at the Naples Film Festival. Meanwhile, they collaborated with magazines such as Vogue Italia, Harper’s Bazaar, Exibart and for the MACRO Museum of Rome with their illustration and photography works, both behind and in front of the camera. After three years from their first project Fera, they wrote and directed the short movie Echoes (2021), presented at the Cineteca of Bologna, during the Divergenti Transgender Film Festival. In a layered, embryonic imaginary of different media and narratives, transgender bodies and desires are the main elements that mark Paoli’s first works and poetic as an openly transgender and non-binary young film director. Since 2022, they’re studying Film Direction at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. Their short movie Star (2024) was premiered at the Cinema Troisi’s Corto Condorello in Rome and screened at other italian Film Festivals such as Corto Dorico, Aphrodite Shorts and Babbaluci FIlm Festival, where it won the first prize. Marina ( 2025) is their latest short film.