(from Rome Luigi Noera with the kind collaboration of Stefano Sica and Valentina Vignoli – The photos are published courtesy of the Fondazione Cinema peri Roma)

From the GRAND PUBLIC section: VOLARE by Margherita Buy, Italy, 2023, 100’ | First work | In his portrait, partly autobiographical, Margherita Buy talks about herself following the traits of her character par excellence: a hypochondriac, obsessed, a bit’ Self-centered and absolutely hilarious.

Her name is Anna Bettini e, among other qualities, she never managed to get on a plane. “Flying is not natural for a human being”, It's one of many reasons. He loses the chance of his life, or better, of his career because of this phobia. She is unable to go to Seoul where a great Korean director is waiting for her with a role written for her. His agent Mariolina, with whom there is a nice comic chemistry, he then proposes to the director Elena Sofia Ricci, unleashing Anna's anger and jealousy.

And your career can also be postponed, but when the daughter, Serena, is fished out by Stanford University, in California, a thirteen hour flight, What is in question is her maternal role.

“Not even the fear of the plane I was able to convey to her”, Anna repeats. She doesn't want to feel replaced by Serena's father, from whom she divorced. He decides to overcome this mental handicap by signing up for a course where he will find others suffering from the same syndrome. A course to learn to fly. A true simulation of reality where Anna, among new knowledge, hallucinations and paranoia, he will try to defeat his fear.

We also see a relationship with the father figure who, albeit left on the margins of the story, requires our full attention. Massimo De Francovich plays the role exceptionally, making every one of his lines memorable, but behind that irony are increasingly more relevant issues: Anna is not taken seriously, the father listens to it as if it were background noise while he does the crossword, she is constantly vilified. Not by chance, the father's death coincides with the overcoming of fear.

In many respects one can get the impression that it is more a film written for television than for the big screen. While Margherita Buy is impeccable, some actors can't keep up with the tempo. and yet, in such a "simple" screenplay we find lines that would require us to pause the viewing, they are so engaging. It's a film that makes you laugh and smile.

And behind this phobia, the fear of flying, which in itself is perhaps already laughable, there is also a completely contemporary feeling hidden: the fear of being left behind; of not being able to experience the unnaturalness of this world, so much, too fast. The only way to keep up is with a nice sense of irony.

Written by the director together with Doriana Leondeff and Antonio Leotti, the film is produced, among others, by Marco Bellocchio.