Voyage secret

A Feature film of

Roberto Andò

Production year2010

French release14/07/2010

Runtime

1h 43m

Synopsis

It's the story of a reconstruction, that of a criminal and tragic event, but also that of a life that Leo Ferri, a psychoanalyst in his forties, will undertake. To save a secret, he must cope with a voyage to Sicily.

His journey is that of a return to the past, for he'd fled from the country 25 years earlier with his little sister Ale. The journey allows him to carry out a lucid reconstruction of the crime that put an end to their childhood and their family history. The occasion to undertake such a journey arrives out of the blue: Ale, his superb sister, has met Harold, a famous Serbian artist, who wants to marry her.

This is an important event, but also a traumatic one, because there exists between brother and sister a bond so strong and close that the idea of marriage had never entered their minds.
What's more, Harold has decided to offer his house in Sicily as a wedding present to his future wife. It's the house from which Leo and Ale had fled, the one where "that" took place. Anna, a thirty-year-old Sicilian living alone with her daughter, will mediate this transaction. Leo, who was not supposed to know a thing, nevertheless learns of the situation purely by chance, thanks to someone who suddenly appears from this buried past.

Leo, who doesn't drive and can't cope with plane travel, is obliged to return to Sicily. As time goes by, painful memories emerge in the very place where the drama took place. In this sprawling house in the countryside surrounding Syracuse, the mother was killed by the father. It happened here, in this house that Harold wants to buy without Ale knowing. It's an impossible transaction that Leo must prevent, without upsetting the fragile equilibrium that has entered the lives of he and his sibling.

Like all journeys, this one will allow the protagonists to leave behind the vestiges of the mysterious past, and to set foot in an unknown land where giving a new meaning to life is at last possible.

This journey is also a journey through today's Italy, of which Sicily is the most contradictory stage. The impression of being reborn, which invades the atmosphere, stems from the anxious, troubled climate of our country, but also from the indestructible desire to rebuild.