8 Production

On the last evening before her departure, Vera is putting her small sister to bed. To hide the real reason for her leaving, she tells her a bedtime fairy tale instead. It's the story of a city swallowed by an eternal night.

Francesco and Eloisa, through old photographs, reconstruct the story of Maša and Gianlorenzo, their grandparents. She, an exile from the Prague countryside, and he, a wealthy Roman intellectual working at the Italian Embassy in Prague. The two fell in love shortly before the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968. Thanks to Gianlorenzo's connections, Maša became the first Czech woman to obtain permission from the Communist Party to marry a foreigner and thus obtain Italian citizenship. The situation continued to worsen, and the rules became suffocating. They decided to leave Maša's family and move to Italy with their three children. There, Maša entered the world of the Roman upper middle class, conservative and often judgmental. Her fourth child was born. Something inside her broke. All her choices, from that moment on, were guided by an uncontrollable need for freedom. A freedom that a totalitarian government would strip from you and never give back.