Tommaso Cotronei

BLOOD AND THE MOON

Italy, 2017, 75′

BLOOD AND THE MOON
What happens to the mind of a child bride? Disempowered and deprived of health, education, safety. Then someone takes courage and reacts. Soraya escapes her husband to reach a village no one knows. The local young student teacher offers her protection and a place to rest until she figures out her next step. This is a story of two young people living in Yemen. A young woman from the city and a young man from the countryside. They become acquainted, fall in love. Tey struggle to educate the children of a remote village so as not to become prey to Alqaeda.

Tommaso Cotronei
Born in a small town in Calabria, in Southern Italy, where, still very young, he started to work in the fields with his parents in the rural countryside. Struck by a place that gives no hopes but backbreaking labour, no chances of wishing for something different, Cotronei finds the strength to flee from his situation at 21. He spends several years looking for something that would suit his hopes while temporarly working as a manual worker in Northern Europe. He gets into the humanities, helping him finding some stability in life. He attends classes at the Philosophy Dpt. at University of Rome La Sapienza, without graduating. In 1993 he luckily becomes Film Director Vittorio De Seta’s assistant, while the former was working on his film “Calabria”. Cotronei finally finds in cinema a means of self-expression. In 1997 he films his first oeuvre, NEL BLU CERCANDO FIABE (In the blue looking for fairy-tales).