THROUGH HER EYES
A Five-film Series by Italian Women Directors
Wednesday, June 3 | 6:30 PM (doors open at 6 PM)
Italian Cultural Institute
710 Sansome Street, San Francisco
THE TIME IT TAKES (Il tempo che vi vuole)
Directed by: Francesca Comencini
Italy/France, 2024, 110 min
Starring: Fabrizio Gifuni, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Anna Mangiocavallo, Luca Donini
In Italian with English subtitles
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SYNOPSIS
Blending memory and cinema, the film retraces Francesca’s coming of age in the shadow of his father, director Luigi Comencini. Through fragments of childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, she revisits the emotional distance, misunderstandings, admiration, and unspoken love that shaped their bond. Cinema is not merely a backdrop but the very language through which father and daughter connect and confront one another. A central thread of the narrative recalls the making of Le avventure di Pinocchio, Luigi Comencini’s iconic television adaptation. The film set becomes both a playground and a formative space for Francesca: a world of imagination and collective creation, but also a place where the father’s professional intensity often overshadows personal closeness. Moving between past and present, reality and recollection, Il tempo che ci vuole reflects on the time necessary to understand one another—the time it takes to grow up, to separate, and ultimately to reconcile. It is a tender meditation on family, artistic legacy, and gratitude, as well as a daughter’s attempt to finally say what could not be said before.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
After so many years spent doing the same job as him and trying to be different from him, I wanted to tell how much I owe everything I am to him: I wanted to pay homage to my father, to his way of making movies, to his way of being, to the importance that his work and his commitment had for our cinema, and to the importance that his person had for me. Perhaps, I said to myself, perhaps now I am old enough, I am capable of it, perhaps now I will be up to this story. Perhaps is now time to say thank you.