Synopsis
The face of a woman. Two voices joking, then a popular song, Un’ora sola ti vorrei. This face and this voice are all that remain for Alina Marazzi of her mother, who committed suicide when she was seven and of whom she tries to retrace the existence through sequences filmed by her maternal grandfather, between 1920 and 1970. These silent images are accompanied by the filmmaker’s voice as she reads letters and diaries written by her mother throughout her life, but also the medical reports from the psychiatric hospitals where she stayed.
A word from Tënk
Un'ora sola ti vorrei (For One More Hour with You) is the title of a romantic song composed in 1938, but made famous in the 1960s by famous singers like Ornella Vanoni. It is also one of the favorite songs of the director's mother Alina Marazzi. With this song, the Italian filmmaker, born in Milan in 1964, wanted to pay tribute to her mother who committed suicide after a long and incurable depression, despite the avant-garde treatments she received in a Swiss hospital. Alina Marazzi wrote this tribute, making a lyrical, poetic, personal, moving, intimate and courageous documentary. The song chosen for the film's title is not only a nod to the Italian music of the 1960s so beloved by the filmmaker's mother, but also expresses a longing for a mother who left too soon, when Marazzi was still a child. The director uses family archives, starting with the Super 8 films of her maternal grandfather, but also letters that her mother wrote from the psychiatric hospital. Un'ora sola ti vorrei is a deeply sensitive and touching film, a journey into the memories and dreams of a little girl and a mother. It is a restorative and therapeutic film for the director herself, but it goes far beyond autobiographical cinema to become a universal work.
Giovanni Princigalli
Filmmaker and teacher
With the support of
