Visions du Réel 2024: Valentina and the MUOSters | Review

At 27, Valentina’s days are punctuated by her crochet projects and walks along the trails of the Sugherata di Niscemi nature reserve in Sicily, near where she lives. These walks lead her to the century-old trees she adores, which she embraces for long moments. Despite being a sensitive and diligent young woman, Valentina suffers from a deep lack of self-confidence, fueled daily by her parents’ judgment. Still living with them, she hasn’t pursued higher education or found a job, often labeled as clumsy and lacking ambition compared to her older sister, a university graduate living and working in the city. This situation increasingly weighs on her, prompting questions about her future. “I’d like to have more freedom. I feel a bit like I’m a failure at everything I do. What am I doing with my life? What will my purpose be?” In the documentary feature Valentina and the MUOSters, which premiered at Visions du Réel in 2024, director Francesca Scalisi presents, through aesthetically pleasing, delicate, and emotionally charged direct cinema, the story of Valentina’s emancipation.

Beyond her lack of self-confidence, Valentina feels responsible for her parents’ future, representing the marginalized citizens left behind by globalization. Her mother, who used to care for the elderly, suffers from back pain and can no longer work. Her father, a former driving instructor, has heart problems and struggles more and more with mobility. Both smoke, are sedentary, and overweight. The family survives on her father’s meager pension, and their property is all they have left. But it’s scant consolation. The forest in the nature reserve is increasingly subject to climatic hazards, ravaged by fires caused by intense drought. And, for the past few years, a field of antennas from the NATO Mobile User Operating System (MUOS) has sprung up near their property on a highly protected military site. These monstrous antennas, besides disfiguring the landscape, harm the health of residents, especially Valentina’s father, as the radio waves disrupt the pacemaker supposed to regulate his heartbeat. “We doctors know that there is interference. That’s why we make recommendations. But what can we recommend to someone who lives under the antennas?“ despairs his doctor. The sound design, with (intra and extra-diegetic) radio interference sound effects, reinforces the omnipresence of these antennas and creates a genuine discomfort. These incessant sounds that descend upon residents are a true deprivation of freedom, against which they cannot fight – attempts at protest are quickly suppressed with violence by law enforcement.

When her father, due to his fragile health, loses his driving privileges, Valentina must take on new responsibilities. Since the family residence is in a rural area, the car is the only mode of transportation, and her mother never learned to drive. Despite his reluctance, her father is forced to teach her the basics of driving. As a former driving instructor, he shows no pedagogy towards her and treats her roughly. However, as the sessions progress, time spent together, and Valentina’s progress, the tension gradually diminishes between father and daughter. When a fire ravages a portion of the nature reserve, they both go to the scene. Valentina, overwhelmed by grief, lets her tears flow, while her father embraces her. Standing before the trees slowly burning, they reminisce about moments of joy spent in this beloved nature.

These small steps lead Valentina to open up to other, more urban territories. She applies for jobs in the city and eventually takes flight one beautiful morning, leaving behind a myriad of crochet flowers as a memento at the base of her cherished trees, on her father’s plants, and hung on the fence protecting the MUOS. “Succulents are strange. There are even succulent plants, which begin to flower after 50 years.” Like the succulent plants lovingly cultivated by her father, Francesca Scalisi captured Valentina’s late but moving blossoming in a documentary that prompts us to reflect on our relationship with territories and how they shape our lives.