cinematography
Martina Zerpelloni
editing
Andrea Campajola
Elisabetta Giannini
music
Andrea Boccia
sound
Mario Avallone

with
Carolina De Lillo Magliulo
Bashir Fadel

production
Marechiarofilm
producer
Antonietta De Lillo

Italian distribution
Lo scrittoio
Italian press office
Lo scrittoio

In the 1990s, an eight-year-old girl, Carolina, is traveling in a desert. There she meets the Saharawi, a people of exiles, chased out of their own land. In the refugee camps, the Saharawi believe that they will shortly be returning home, thanks to the referendum that will restore the Western Sahara, largely occupied by Morocco, to their own people. One day, as Carolina trudges through the dunes, a wind comes up and sweeps her into the future. Thirty years later: it’s still Carolina, but she’s an adult. She’s back in the same desert: the children she once knew are now young men and women, and new generation has replaced them: children who have just returned from Naples, which had taken them in, far from the desert, in a journey in the opposite direction. As past meets present, a painful truth sinks in: the referendum longed for by the Saharawi has turned into a mirage, and hope is dwindling in the face of new prospects, all of them troubling.

2026 La leggenda del deserto (doc)
2023 Sognando Venezia (short)

“Three years ago, I came across pictures of a trip to the Sahara desert made by my sister Carolina when she was eight years old. Looking at those family photographs made me wonder what it means for a child to suddenly find herself in a world so very different from her own. That question made me want to go back to the Saharawi refugee camps and reunite with that decent folk my sister had met many years earlier. The film springs from this return journey to the same places, as seen through the eyes of a little girl, who tries to figure out what the word ‘home’ means. The voice of the child Carolina accompanies the story like a presence from another time, as she asks a question of her future and our present: what happens to a kind, dignified people when they are forgotten?” (Elisabetta Giannini)

Elisabetta Giannini (Naples, 1997) is a filmmaker and editor. After receiving a VFX degree at the CSC – National Film School, in 2022 she took part in the Becoming Maestre Program promoted by Netflix and the David di Donatello Awards. She was an editor and VFX artist on Fulci Talks (2021, Noir in Festival), L’occhio della Gallina by Antonietta De Lillo (2025, screened at Giornate degli Autori in Venice and shortlisted for the David di Donatellos), and l’Odio dei Motus (2026). Giannini made her directorial debut in 2023 with the short film Sognando Venezia, awarded the Special Prize for Best Directing Debut at the 2024 Silver Ribbons. In 2026, she directed her first documentary feature, The Legend of the Desert.