TAFF2020: Shorts Programme 3

Country: Egypt, Italy, Germany 
Director: Amir Ramadan 
Length: 18 mins 
Synopsis: Fatou is a 23-year-old Italian girl of Senegalese origin. She lives in a suburb of Rome with her mother who would like to educate according to the rigid impositions of her culture of origin. But Fatou is looking for his own identity that combines her black Muslim being with Italian society, and unlike most of her peers, the social stigma of the immigrant is imprinted on her, that isolates her and reduces her friendships with other young children of foreigners. Her authentic passion and screen against prejudice is singing: music is what will never betray herself. After a night at the disco, Fatou is attacked by a thirty year old Italian who first insults her, and then tries to physically mistreat her. She confronts him with courage, opposes him, and finally manages to get on the bus that takes her back to her neighbourhood. In the short walk home, Fatou finds the strength to break the fear and humiliation with the song. An intimate nocturnal song in which Fatou tells herself, in the silence of the sleeping city, expressing his dreams as a girl, the hope of a radiant life that is perhaps already waiting for her. Fatou says she does not know love, if not in her mother’s feelings, she sings about the possibility of love, which means first of all to love oneself. And its poetic momentum becomes universal reflection on the sense of identity, so longed for and, for many, never really possessed.