Flying High – Voliamo Alto

Details

Marisa and Giancarlo are husband and wife. Problems during childbirth have caused very large damage to their body, but not to their lives. With tenacity, from childhood, they have struggled to carry on a full life. The film is the story of how they managed to do it.

In “Voliamo Alto” three narrative threads are intertwined.

The film first follows a day in the life of Marisa and Giancarlo, in their home in Rocca Canavese (a small town 30 km from Turin): awakening, breakfast, work, lunch and dinner, visits to and of friends, up to bed. “I can do things, because there’s someone who gives me hands and legs!” Marisa says. And in fact we know Daniela and Teo, who help Marisa and Giancarlo in the morning and in the afternoon … “But – as Teo says – we do things for them, but they reamain the main charachters of their lives”.

The second “thread” is that of the life of Marisa and Giancarlo (told by themselves): from the “adolescent crisis” (“at 14 I wanted to throw myself from that balcony up there” Marisa says), to the choice-conquest of studying in a college, until graduation (Psychology for both) … then friendships, knowledge, love and marriage … work, projects for the future …

The third thread is Volare Alto: the association founded 20 years ago by Marisa and Giancarlo, to help families with disabled children to find ways of autonomy for children. Over the years, Volare Alto has become a network of about 40 families, where one helps one another and tries to “live normally”. The film shows how even on a wheelchair you can go skiing, dancing, doing art, hiking … in short, be happy and find meaning for your life.

“Handicap is normal – says Giancarlo – because it is only a matter of considering a difference, and I believe that differences enrich man, enrich the world”.