Sulla terra leggeri / Sara Fgaier / Italy / 94’ / 2024

Gian struggles with the darkness caused by sudden amnesia. Haunted by fragments of the past, which emerge in his mind with the grainy appearance of remote archival images, he receives from his daughter Miriam a diary he wrote in his twenties. Gian realizes that it all revolves around Leila, the Franco-Tunisian woman with whom he discovered love in the space of one night by binding himself to her with a promise of the future, a thousand times expected, a thousand times unfulfilled. Who is this woman who has been so important in his life? Where is she now? How is it possible that he has forgotten her? Through his past selves Gian has the strength to face the most difficult test: accepting that he has lost someone and learning how to find him again.

Directed by Sara Fgaier
Subject by Sara Fgaier, Sabrina Cusano
Screenplay by Sara Fgaier, Sabrina Cusano, Maurizio Buquicchio
Photography by Alberto Fasulo
Editing Aline Hervé, Sara Fgaier, Enrica Gatto
Original Music by Carlo Crivelli
Set Design by Santo-Pablo Krappmann
Costumes by Andrea Cavalletto

Sara Fgaier
Sara Fgaier is an Italian-Tunisian director, editor and producer.
She studied Film History and Criticism at L’Università di Bologna, then continued her film training within Marco Bellocchio’s directing workshop attending the Bobbio school for a year in 2005-2006.
In 2012 she was the first Italian to receive the Rolex Prize for the Arts, which allowed her to work for a year in New York, under the tutelage of Walter Murch.
Since 2013 she has been making a number of short films, mostly from archival images. In 2014, with the episode L’umile Italia (Venice Days), in choreography with Pietro Marcello, she participated in the collective film 9X10.
In 2018 she made ten short films for Storia di un’amicizia, the adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, staged by the theater company Fanny & Alexander.
In 2018 she made the short film Gli anni (Orizzonti), loosely based on the novel of the same name by Annie Ernaux. The Horizons jury chose it as a candidate for the European Film Awards, and the European Film Academy decided to award it the Best European Short Film 2018 Award. The film also won the Silver Ribbon as Best Documentary Short.
In 2020 it won the Underground Spirit Award.
In 2023 it founded the independent production company Limen.
In 2008 it founded Avventurosa, an independent production company, together with Pietro Marcello. This collaboration results in a series of films of which she is both editor and producer. She was editor, assistant director and researcher of archival images for The Mouth of the Wolf (2009). The film wins, among others, the Berlin Forum (Caligari Award) and Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival, Best Film Award and Fipresci Award at the Turin Film Festival, SCAM International Jury Award at Cinéma du Réel (Paris), International Jury Award and Signis Award at BAFICI in Buenos Aires. The film also won the David di Donatello and the Nastro d’Argento as best documentary of 2010.
She is the editor and producer of Bella e Perduta (2015), which was presented in official competition at the Locarno Film Festival. The film won, among others, the Bergman Award at the Gothenburg Film Festival, the Best Film Award at the International Festival de La Roche-Sur-Yon, and once again the Silver Ribbon. Meanwhile, she has not stopped collaborating, as an editor, producer and archival researcher, with other directors as well, including: Franco Maresco, Aleksandr Sokurov and Gianfranco Rosi. Since 2010, she has decided to devote part of her time to teaching at various film schools. For five years she was responsible for editing within the Documentary Course at the Experimental Center of Cinematography.