Ten Winters

Winter 1999. A water bus is crossing the Venice lagoon. Camilla, a shy eighteen-year-old, who has recently arrived in the city from a country village to study Russian literature, notices a boy in the crowd. He too is carrying a suitcase, he too is just arrived. The two start exchanging glances: She’s shy, he’s more outgoing. Silvestro is the same age as Camilla, but unlike her, he hides his inexperience behind a naive jauntiness. When the water bus reaches the landing stage, he decides to follow the girl through the foggy alleyways of an island in the lagoon... Thus begins a ten-year-long adventure that sees the two live their student life in Venice and continue on to the alienating frenzy of Moscow, with its theatres and vast, trafficked streets. Camilla and Silvestro will experience other love stories, they’ll write to each other, share a house on the lagoon, be guests at a wedding in the Russian countryside, and be absent-minded passers-by at the crowded Rialto market. At different points in time they’ll be enemies, friends, acquaintances, and lovers close-by and faraway. Dieci inverni is a love story, or more precisely the prologue of a love story. A prologue that goes on for ten years, recounted in frames: Each winter is an open window for exploring the life of two people who never lose contact with each other and continue to grow up, including their difficult but splendid entrance into adulthood.