Respiro

Directed by Emanuele Crialese

Produced by Fandango, Les Films de Tournedos

A tender yet unsettling portrait of a spirited woman's mental illness and her family's struggle to contain her within the constraints of island life and social convention.

Grazia is a free-spirited mother-of-three married to shy fisherman Pietro and living on the idyllic but isolated island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea. She shows signs of manic depressive behavior — one moment she's laughing wildly and swimming half-naked in the sea, while the next she's curled in a ball on her bed. Out of her earshot, the adult members of her extended family vaguely discuss sending her to a facility of some sort in Northern Italy.