WAITHOOD

Italy | 2025 | 63 min | col. | Italian

Mauro lives on the outskirts of Naples, but his heart lies far away, in Mindelo, attached to a Carnival that is a dream, a promise, and a homecoming all at once. Mauro’s life is spent waiting, in a fragile daydream, while it goes by amid working shifts at the restaurant, taking care of his brothers, and recalling memories that echo like an ancient calling. Waithood depicts the liminal time of a youth yearning for flowering and nurtured by a desire to return to Cape Verde which blows as powerfully as the wind. There, childhood smells of sweet breezes and bitumen, and the Mandinka dance like ancestral spirits. The journey turns out to be unfeasible, so it is the film director who leaves in his stead, exploring sites linked to Mauro’s memory with a camera that becomes a third body, an affectionate and living presence. Inserts from Sarah Maldoror’s films, edited with footage filmed on location, outline an emotional and political atlas in which the images seek connection rather than consolation. A film about the right to free movement, to love, and to exist, as well as about the sweetness of belonging to oneself. (L.F.)