Small Body

Laura Samani's first feature is set in northern Italy in 1900. Agata's baby is stillborn, and by the doctrine of the time the soul of an unbaptised child stays in limbo forever. Agata hears of a place in the mountains where a stillborn infant can be brought back for the length of a single breath, long enough to be baptised. She sets out with the body hidden in a box and meets a solitary young stranger who offers to help her get there. Shot in Friulian and Venetian, the film crosses a landscape that runs from the Adriatic lagoon to the snowbound Dolomites. It premiered at Cannes in Critics' Week. Samani neither endorses nor mocks the belief; she watches what grief can make a body do. Who it's for: viewers who like slow, hard European cinema that thinks through landscape. Who it's not for: anyone unprepared for a story built on a dead infant and a heavy account of mourning.