The Invisible Thread

Leone is sixteen and has two fathers, Simone and Paolo. He was born in California with the help of an American woman called Tilly and grew up in Italy. He has to make a documentary for school and chooses his own family as the subject. The moment he turns the camera on, the balance in the house begins to break: one of his fathers is seeing someone else, and Leone is dealing with his own first relationship. Marco Simon Puccioni directs. Filippo Timi plays Paolo, Francesco Scianna plays Simone and Francesco Gheghi plays Leone, with Giulia Maenza in the cast. It had special screenings in selected cinemas on 21, 22 and 23 February 2022 and went out on Netflix on 4 March 2022. The form is a documentary inside a documentary. The footage Leone shoots is used in the film and the family speak to camera, which is the source of both the humour and the tension. The subject is not gay parenthood but the possibility of any family coming apart. The film keeps the legal situation in Italy and the prejudices in the background and puts an ordinary family crisis at the centre. Puccioni had made a documentary on the same subject before, and this is its fictional counterpart. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian family drama and narratives about young people. Who it is not for: the tone is uneven, some strands go unfinished, and the ending ties up too neatly.