Thirty-seven years have passed, but the desire to discover the truth about Gisella Orrù's tragic death remains strong. This is evident from the large audience (1,200 people over three days of screenings) that flocked to Carbonia to watch the first screenings of "Stelle nel pozzo," a short film by Cagliari-born director Paolo Carboni inspired by the story of the 16-year-old girl, killed and thrown into a well in San Giovanni Suergiu in 1989. The circumstances have never been fully clarified, despite the judicial truth having handed down her convictions. And the fact that the two screenings scheduled for Monday at the Odissea cinema in Cagliari, as part of the Nosu e is Atrus festival organized by the Babel cultural association, are certainly telling.
The film draws loosely from the true story of a brutal crime that profoundly shook public opinion on the island and which, decades later, remains shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, a never-quite-resolved case. Fueling these doubts are the suicide in prison of one of the convicts and the disappearance of the second, who vanished without trace after his release.
The film doesn't delve into the current situation, but instead delves into the human and social context in which the tragedy unfolded. In the 1980s, Carbonia was a town devastated by the closure of its mines and marked by the effects of the post-industrial crisis, with unemployment, urban decay, and a widespread sense of abandonment.
"Stelle nel Pozzo was born from the need to revisit a story—that of Gisella Orrù, on which the short is loosely based—that has been told many times over the years, in podcasts, books, and television programs, without ever truly focusing on the living conditions of the young girls involved. It's not the news that interests me," explains Paolo Carboni, "but what news has always left out: the adolescence of post-industrial Sardinia in the late 1980s, a world never truly explored by film, made of unwavering friendships, dreams of escape, and a vulnerability made even more exposed by the social context of Carbonia."
At the center of the drama are Caterina (played by Elisa Luciano) and Cinzia (Manuela Cambuli), two sixteen-year-olds bound by a deep friendship and a shared passion for volleyball. Behind a seemingly strong personality, Caterina hides the fragility of a family severely tested by the mining crisis and cultivates the dream of escaping a provincial reality perceived as suffocating. A desire shared with Cinzia drives both to seek a future different from the one their homeland seems to have already mapped out for them. In their attempts to emancipate themselves, the two girls become entangled in the adult world, in risky situations, and slip into a spiral from which it becomes increasingly difficult to escape, culminating in a dramatic epilogue.
