This film begins with a family taboo: Michele, the uncle I never met, who died of AIDS at 28. Developed during the Nouvelle Bug Vol. 4 workshop, an international avant-garde digital cinema residency, the short became a way to confront both a personal wound and my uncle’s heroin addiction and eventual loss. A story that scarred my family and echoes the experience of a generation in Italy.
To do so, I placed two voices in dialogue: my mother’s recollection and the automated language of an AI. These two perspectives are often in tension, the clash between them is unstable, sometimes absurd, sometimes revealing. Through their contrast, Michele’s story gradually emerges. In this fragile reconstruction, remembering and analyzing his photographs becomes more than an archival exercise – it becomes a gesture of understanding and healing, a way to trace the human life behind the images and to reflect on memory, loss, and what remains unspoken.
Paolo Baiguera
