Yothin Clavenzani

An English teacher at technical school in the outskirts of Rome knows that her twenty-four eighteen-year-old students do not consider her a human being, speak ill of her, are ready to contest her and feel a morbid curiosity towards her private life. Still, she tries to relate to them and the result of this effort is "a great love story". Cenciarelli describes the lessons (strictly in English, despite the students' protestations), the fights in and out of class, the students' tricks, their need to confront each other, their desire to show themselves superior, their weaknesses and their loneliness. As the seasons go by, the relationship between teacher and students becomes more complicated and deepens, alternating moments of great enthusiasm and great disappointment, until the baccalaureate exam, about which she cares more than they do.

It is evening. Tarek is seventeen years old and is on his way to see his friends, who have asked him on the telephone to pass by the park first and buy a few grams of dope: nothing much, just enough for some fun. The boy buys the stuff in the dark park, but when he emerges finds that someone has seen him: a policeman in plain clothes, sitting in his own car. The man could simply confiscate the hash, intimidate him a little and then let him go, or he could decide to take him to the station and call his parents. But he opts for neither of these things. He tells the young man to get in the car and starts the engine. Where does he want to take him? The policeman is ambiguous, mysterious. What does he want from the teenager? Tarek is in check, he can’t just leave. The policeman makes him stay with him the whole night, driving around in apparently aimless fashion, stopping first in one place, then in another.

Millennials experience first love and discover their emerging identities in this teen drama told partly through texts, chats and social media posts.