Fragole a Novembre

Few words about it

Freedom is mankind's mirage — and to reach it we might eat away at any strength and resources, giving ​up a little more each day, until nothing's left but duty. It's easy to forget that mirages are only illusions. 

When she meets Salvo, Francesca is lost in her own desert, searching for the one mirage during the hardest stretch of her life: the simple chance to desire again. She'd once dreamed of finishing her studies and doing the work she'd poured so much hope into. When that's taken from her, her world falls apart, and she's left buried under the rubble. She starts, then, to feel guilty for wanting anything at all, and she stops chasing a different future, stops listening to her needs, and just gets through the days: apathetic outside, quietly furious underneath. Her mirage is to feel worthy of anything as unlikely as even strawberries in November. Maybe even worthy of love.

And yet, she discovers she isn't the only one walking toward a similar oasis.

Salvo is an artist who's built his own prison out of solitude, worn down by how little patience he has for people. He's shut everyone out, all but forgotten how to connect. The only thing that still lets him be himself is his imagination. The same imagination that becomes the space where Salvo and Francesca true selves meet, enough to help them to relearn how to want, how to love. But imagination has its limits, and soon they reach the point where it runs out. At last, they'll have to find out if their connection is strong enough to build something real out in the unforgiving reality.

Strawberries in November is how Francesca tells her own story to Sergio — and, through him, to the audience — within the frame of a speed date. She literally walks us back and forth to show in real time everything that brought her to that night, in that club in Milan.

The story is a love letter to that giddy, slightly dangerous thrill of letting your own imagination seduce you.