From 19 July to 22 July 2001, as the G8 summit was taking place in Genoa, Italy lived through such violence and terror that Amnesty International ultimately described what happened as “a human rights violation of unprecedented proportions in recent European history”.  300,000 people from anti-globalisation movements and pacifist associations who had staged protests – followed by serious riots sparked by the black bloc – suffered violence at the hands of law enforcement officers, culminating on 20 July with the killing of 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani. The following evening, the police stormed the Genoa Social Forum coordination centre, carrying out a brutal beating and acts of torture (25 police officers were convicted for these events). Two powerful civic denunciation films have been made on the subject: Diaz – Don’t Clean Up This Blood by Daniele Vicari and the documentary Carlo Giuliani, Boy by Francesca Comencini.

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By way of Föa – Once Upon A Future – which world-premiered in the Flash Forward section of the Busan International Film Festival – 29-year-old Genoese director Margherita Ferrari sought to interweave a private story with that “great collective dream/nightmare”, as she herself described it. Building on one of her earlier short films, Ferrari developed her debut feature by looking back on those summer days when she was only four years old.

Föa follows an 18-year-old from Genoa called Nicole (Gaia Ravina), who is eight months pregnant. The film opens with Nicole’s high-school graduation exam, during which she faints. Things at home are far from ideal; it’s clear her parents are unhappy about their daughter’s decision to keep her baby. As they’re about to set off on holiday, Nicole announces she wants to stay at home.  She later meets her boyfriend, Marco (Pietro Giannini), who says he needs to “switch off”. Realising it’s over between them, Nicole returns home and cuts loose, dancing to Crying at the Discoteque which is playing full blast, while, outside, the first tear-gas canisters begin to crackle. Someone rings the doorbell. When Nicole opens up, three young protesters burst in, with obvious truncheon marks on their bodies. They’re being chased by the police and need to hide for a while.

Their initial mutual hostility melts into cautious solidarity. Irene (Clara Tramontano), a classic social-centre militant, speaks of how she met Julian (Gabriele Falsetta) at summer camps organised with collectives from all over Europe where “they try to get like-minded people on the same page”. A doctor called Julian seems the most bitterly disappointed by this protest which has turned into “a war we’re losing”.  With them is a young Basque man called Elixi (Iker Urgoiti), whose brother is in prison for terrorism. In those few hours of forced cohabitation, the four mainly share their fears: their immediate concern, dictated by the violence exploding in the streets, and a deeper-seated worry, which raises question marks over their future.

Buoyed by Filippo Mariano’s warm cinematography, Ferrari’s film direction isn’t just persuasive on a technical level; it also reveals promising sensitivity in bringing characters to life, against the backdrop of a dramatic historical event which the director conveys in soft focus (in Genoese, ‘Föa’ means “fairy tale”). Whilst this encounter between young women and men who have made different choices doesn’t result in any real shift in how they see the world, a thought which is common to all four of them does clearly emerge: the erosion of all their certainties over the future. But there’s a fundamental issue with this acerbic screenplay penned by the director with Anita Della Cioppa and Veronica Penserini, with its juxtaposition between a young man who’s killed while protesting for the idea that “another world is possible” and the wailing cry of a newborn, suggesting that the more fitting and more moral choice might not be to believe in the “struggle” but to place hope for a non-oppressive future in the act of becoming a mother.  

Föa – Once Upon A Future was produced by Numero 10 and The Apartment (a Fremantle company), in association with PiperFilm and in collaboration with Netflix. International sales are handled by PiperPlay.