With Demetra in esilio, I wanted to rework the myth of Demeter and Persephone in a contemporary key. I drew inspiration from the fairy-tale-like stories written by the German poet Heinrich Heine, in which he imagined the fate of the pagan gods following the advent of Christianity; these are collected in a book entitled The Gods in Exile.
The myth of Demeter and Persephone fascinates me for several reasons. I have always been struck by the idea that the passing of the seasons, the very order of things, depends, in the myth, on something as human as the relationship between mother and daughter. Then there is an aspect that pertains solely to the world of images: Persephone’s appearance and disappearance have always reminded me of the relationship, so characteristic of cinema, between what we see and what lies off-screen.
In my writing, I have brought the myth closer to the reality of my daily life, imagining an endless, stifling summer in the city where I live, in which winter appears as a painful omen for a mother, whilst a daughter finds her own path by following the call of her artistic quest. Whilst the original myth is based on a cycle, in the film I transpose its structure into the form of a loop: Lia’s days, punctuated by her care for Daria, repeat themselves with slight variations, allowing a gradual emotional unravelling to surface beneath the routine, leading towards an inevitable outcome.
By focusing on the gestures of everyday life, I sought to create a suspended, dreamlike atmosphere, in which time seems to stretch out and change appears first impossible, then inevitable. At the heart of the film lies Lia’s desire, the invisible force that drives her towards her destiny.
