Munich 2012

with Zhao Tao, Rade Sherbedgia, Marco Paolini, Roberto Citran, Giuseppe Battiston

Produced by Jolefilm and Aeternam Films

As all important encounters between a man and a woman who were meant to meet, the unlikely bond between a young Chinese immigrant woman, Shun Li, and ‘the Poet’ Bepi, seems born under the same inescapable and inexorable star. The mysterious young woman leaves her job in a textile factory near Rome for a small town along the Venetian lagoon when she finds work in a tavern inn. In fact, she is driven by one secret burning desire. That is, to  somehow get her papers and bring her young son, left in China, to Italy to join her.

The tavern is a man’s world. It has always been the traditional meeting place of the local fishermen of the lagoon, men who were born and who will die in that very town. For years the beautiful old Slav fisherman, Bepi, an immigrant who came to the Veneto when just a youth, has also come to the tavern. A tender, delicate bond grows between Shun Li and Bepi. For both of them, it is a poetic universe that shatters their solitudes, a silent dialogue between their two cultures, so different, yet not at all distant. It is also an odyssey into the deep heart of a lagoon, which can be both the mother and cradle of identities, forever in movement. Yet, such beauty goes beyond convention, transcends age, cultural milieu, society. It breaks the rules of both the Chinese and local communities and, perhaps out of fear, they try to come between the couple and their voyage.