Lettera al presidente

Rome, 2 June 2013, Festa della Repubblica, which honours the day of the referendum in 1946 that led to Italy’s being declared a republic. Three men wait in the long queue at the presidential residence Palazzo del Quirinale, which traditionally opens its gardens on this national holiday.
In 1969, as young boys in a small village, they sent a letter to the president. In the euphoria surrounding the American moon landing, they asked him to help them reach Mars. The letter is still kept in the presidential archive, along with thousands of others sent over the decades by Italian citizens.
Documentary maker Marco Santarelli highlights a selection of these letters sent between 1946 and 1969. A cross-section of individual and collective dreams, desperate pleas for help and hopeful plans that the Italian people expressed during the initial decades after the war.