Synopsis

"The teacher said we need to remember the last simile, the one about the flowers. Dante says he finds courage because he understands he is loved, that he is sought after by those who love him, even if he is lost. To illustrate this, he uses the image of flowers. He says that flowers bend and close up in the cold of the night; they only straighten up when illuminated by the sun. The teacher commented: 'It is only a love that warms and illuminates that allows us to start again after the cold of the darkness.' She said that sometimes we cannot live out our heart's desires. And that being loved makes it possible." Iris is sixteen, with many failings at school and a constant rebellion glued to her. She lost her mother when she was still a child, lives with her father and spends her days drowning in the dreams and questions that every teenager carries with them. Her silences begin to shatter thanks to Manfredi, a boy who is good at school, a lover of music, and neglected by his family. Manfredi is the love Iris cannot live, the friend who never tires of waiting for her on the hill of silence, a place just for them, a hidden place where they can seek the sky. Things take a turn for the worse when Iris's father falls ill; despite the love and burning desires of youth, nothing seems to overcome the emptiness that can overwhelm us. One autumn day, Iris meets Chiara, a young substitute Italian teacher. In her eyes, she's the usual teacher full of words and empty of questions. But Chiara sees in Iris a hidden talent and the reflection of a familiar pain. For this reason, she breaks her silence, using that talent to save the school year and the beauty Iris holds within herself, the beauty she no longer believes in. Because, sometimes, the silences of souls, when someone encounters them, fall silently, like autumn leaves, teaching us that only where wounds and expectations live can the search for one's own face and what can save it arise. Thanks to Chiara, Iris and Manfredi grow even closer, they talk and try to discover together the beauty of silence, of a verse by Dante, of the infinity that lies in a starry sky and within our hearts.