Renata lives in a country town where life follows the rhythm of rural activities. During the summer Renata gets her first period. A sense of upset arises within her when she realises that ancient folk beliefs surrounding menstruation influence the lives of the women in the community. “The title is a dialect expression used to refer to the menstrual cycle without naming it. It literally means ‘that thing on her’, as if menstruation were a negative presence looming over the body.
Director’s biography – OLGA TORRICO
Italian film director and producer, based in Bologna, Olga Torrico was born in 1991. She lives and works in Bologna. In 2016, with Adam Selo she founded the production company Sayonara Film. Impure premiered at Alice nella Città where it received the Rai Cinema Channel Award.
Director’s Notes
I grew up in a small country town where folk beliefs about menstruation have always existed and still persist today. Especially in the rituals surrounding certain moments of rural life, there is widespread knowledge that women are believed to carry a destructive and impure force within them when they have their period—when they have “chello ‘ncuollo.”
“Chello ‘ncuollo” is a dialect expression used to refer to menstruation without naming it. It literally means “that thing on [her],” as if menstruation were a negative presence looming over the body. What cannot be “said” becomes frightening. And in fact, when you have your period, you are believed to have the power to dry out plants, rot meat, or ruin jars of tomato sauce just by touching them.
Renata’s story is steeped in the lived experiences of several generations of women close to me—my grandmother’s generation, my mother’s, and my own. This element played a key role in the creative direction of the short film, particularly the decision to set the story outside of a specific time. By telling of beliefs that are static and unchanging, passed down and still present, I wanted to create an overlap of elements that would prevent the audience from identifying a clear time period. Central to this was the concept of repetition—the repetition of something that always remains the same and keeps happening, over and over again. […]