SYNOPSIS

The film highlights the relationship between women’s growing social empowerment and the rise in sexual abuse by men – a trend that was the opposite of what was largely expected to happen. The film revolves around Marina Valcarenghi, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst with a forty-five-year career in clinical work that has allowed her to observe the persistence of women’s insecurity, despite the economic and social independence they have gradually achieved, and understand why. Valcarenghi was the first to introduce psychoanalysis in prisons, starting with the Opera and Bollate penitentiaries. For twelve years she worked with male inmates held in solitary confinement; most of them had been convicted of sexual violence.

THE AUTHOR

Yuri Ancarani (Ravenna 1972), is an Italian video artist. His works, which combine elements of documentary cinema and contemporary art, aim to explore aspects that go unnoticed in everyday life. His way of focusing and using the camera with meticulous precision creates his distinct aesthetics, marked by the sculptural depth of the shots and of video works that investigate the hidden elements of daily life and of social codes. His works have been presented in numerous exhibitions and museums in Italy and abroad, including the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), MAXXI (Rome), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and the Guggenheim Museum (New York). In 2016 his feature film The Challenge won the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Festival.