Il cassetto segreto

Costanza has a famous father. Giuseppe Quatriglio was a Sicilian journalist, author and globetrotter. Smart, hungry for life, good-looking. He filled a house with books, texts and mementos. It was in this rich environment that Costanza grew up. In 2010, she begins filming her father, without extra lighting, without prep, just him in his bathrobe. With one hand she hauls down the “1995-2001” box for him from the top shelf, with the other hand she holds the camera. Upon her father’s death she decides to make The Secret Drawer. She stays on and keeps filming – using both hands like a virtuoso. While she empties his house, the film jets through post-war Europe with her father and the world is revealed from a Mediterranean perspective, the daughter stays in the house, staging and performing her relationship with her father. His books and boxes are catalogued, his sense of order transferred. A powerful tidying up process, an upheaval. Yet in these moments of dissolution, a wealth is revealed – and a father. “This archive is showing us a much friendlier person than I thought.” One hand in world history, the other very close to her father himself. (Berlinale)