Valentina and the MUOSters

Valentina is 27 and lives with her parents in rural Sicily, near a high-profile US military base and its MUOS communications system. She is eager to start a life of her own, like her older sister, but she’s torn by a sense of responsibility for her increasingly frail parents. Though they clearly love each other, they often express it in clumsy ways.

The film follows the family’s slow-paced existence, focusing on handcrafts, tending to plants, Valentina’s driving lessons and her father’s health. The sedate rhythm of these daily routines is interrupted by visits from Valentina’s sister, who lives in the city, and protests against the presence of military antennas that emit dangerous radiation. And all the while, Valentina is slowly but surely loosening her ties with her parents.

The carefully composed shots, ranging from evocative landscapes to close-ups of Valentina’s hands as she crochets, are accompanied by the striking and at times almost indiscernible presence of the soundscape—but it is always present in the background, like the radiation.