Hidden Pages

Francesca Melandri is an internationally renowned Italian writer who is working on her new novel. Its topic is the relationship between Italy’s colonial past and today’s mass migrations. She researches Italian and Ethiopian archives and interviews witnesses, all the while dealing with the collective denial and glossing-over surrounding fascist’s memories in Italy. As she does so, she discovers that her own father had a very different story, and much more surprising, than the one which has always been told in her family. The film accompanies the writer on her long journey of research, where she meets with key witnesses in Italy and Ethiopia. We are with her when she talks to witnesses and scholars, gleaning precise historical details that will give creative force to the pages of her book. We are at her side when she scales a cliff in Ethiopia in search of the cave where hundreds of civilians were exterminated by the Italian occupants with poison gas. We glimpse inside of her notebooks, at the quick notes she jots down during these conversations, jottings that will evolve into the characters of her book. An original use of archive material creates a strong link between a denied past and today’s resurgence, not just in Italy but in the whole West, of racial intolerance.