CENTRO PECCI

Veniamin is an adolescent going through a mystic crisis in which he challenges the idea of his family and school with a series of questions: can girls go to the swimming course in bikinis? Is there a place at school for sex education? Should the theory of evolution be part of the natural science syllabus? While adults are left aghast by the boy’s certainties, which derive from the scriptures alone, Elena, his biology teacher, is the only one able to defy him on his own ground. This film was one of the revelations of the last Cannes Festival, and it shows us the interesting figure of a young person who tries to impose his own idea of freedom at school, based on the rules of the Bible and the Christian tradition. The question the film poses is a topical and interesting one: can you be a rebel and a nonconformist following the dictates of a religion?