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Corpo Celeste is Alice Rohrwacher’s (Alba’s sister) very personal and very genuine story of 13-year-old Marta’s move from Switzerland to Italy is the best of two worlds; it’s got authenticity and realism but remains an allegorical fairy tale, with a young heroine fighting figurative dragons in a far-off land.

Marta (newcomer Yle Vianello) has lived most of her life in a more secular location in Switzerland and when the family returns to their native Calabria, she’s thrown into a Jesus Land that she is unfamiliar with. So that she’ll make friends and prepare for her Catholic confirmation, Marta’s mother puts her in the parish confirmation class.

The teacher is a woman that anyone familiar with a Catholic parish knows well. Every church has someone just like her; a lady that runs the show, a kind of “woman behind the man”, in this case the man is a priest. Don’t misunderstand me – the church needs her. In Marta’s parish, Santa (played by the virtually unknown Pasqualina Scuncia) selflessly toils to guide the young people of the church, organize celebrations and play housewife for the priest, who doesn’t appreciate any of it. Pasqualina Scuncia doesn’t seem to be acting – she is Santa, playing the role with astonishing credibility.

The priest, (Salvatore Cantalupo from Gomorrah) who is working behind the scenes to get out of the hick town that the parish is in and sees himself in a more influential job, has everyone under his thumb, and though this kind of arrangement is new to Marta, her mother, and her sister, and she go along with it.

Marta, who has no voice in this new land, says more with her eyes and her facial expressions than with words, and though she wants to please her over-worked mother, she isn’t buying it all and she has to draw a line somewhere. For this little girl, new to Jesus Land, it isn’t enough to just go through the motions for her confirmation. She wants to understand what she’s signing up for.

Corpo Celeste is a surprising and powerful achievement for such a young and relatively inexperienced director. A documentary filmmaker, this is her first feature film and she was awarded the Nastro d’Argento for best new director.