Nonna

Summary

Director Vincent Graf's documentary portrait of his larger-than-life grandmother Rosa, whom he calls Nonna in Italian. She lives alone in a two-story house in southern Italy that she and her late husband built after more than three decades as guest workers in Germany. They had envisioned it as a home base for the entire family, but most of them ultimately stayed in Germany. Since her husband’s death, Rosa has run the house herself as a bed-and-breakfast that has clearly seen better days. Her daily life is shaped by physical labor, the growing challenges of old age, and a region with increasingly few prospects. Her days include loud, often delightfully absurd arguments with her brother, who lives nearby, as well as regular trips to the nearby sea – quiet moments when her contentment and zest for life shine through. Contact with her children and grandchildren in Germany is mostly limited to video calls, often complicated by the distance and technical glitches. At the heart of the film is the question of what becomes of a life’s work built for a family that has long since made its home elsewhere – and how life between two countries evolves when it takes a different course than originally planned.