Acqua in bocca

Acqua in bocca is a Corsican expression meaning “water in the mouth”. It is also an invitation to silence. In the search for the story of her grandfather, who died in July 1944, Pascale Thirode encounters many silences: be it her mother’s meagre attachment to her homeland or doors that refuse to open, the reasons for her grandfather’s arrest or an unnamed suicide, lost administrative documents or the grey areas of legal papers, a missing list of collaborators or the opaque legends of a family photograph album with photos torn out, a beautiful residence nestling behind the secrecy of its walls or a nameless grave… For Pascale Thirode and her two daughters, this long and difficult enquiry—which takes us from Ajaccio to Bastia, from Erbalunga to an underground world, with its mingling of black market activities, espionage and love, resistance and betrayal, in a confused period between the Liberation and Occupation—is also the re-appropriation of a land and history and a liberation from dread. (Yann Lardeau)