Acqua in bocca

Synopsis by director Pascale Thirode: "I am Corsican through my mother, although she never passed on her history to me, nor anything about this island. My mother seems to have been unaware of her origins for a long time. A few years ago, by chance, I found a photo album in her belongings. They had been methodically removed, leaving only a few scattered glue marks and captions. The captions in this album are the clues to a path I traveled with my two daughters, aged 10 and 13, the youngest links in my family history. An arrival by boat, a slow approach to the island in the sea mist where the coast is outlined, an attempt to focus on the unknown. Docking in Bastia, my mother's hometown, and penetrating Corsica like flesh, by intrusion. To approach a man, her father, who died in strange conditions in Ajaccio, in July 1944, almost a year after the liberation of the island. Between secrecy and doubt, to overcome the uneasiness of an inheritance or a history that could not be transmitted and that an insular expression translates in a physical way: "Acqua in bocca", water in the mouth, water that prevents from speaking."