TREATMENT
A person is getting dressed in the locker room; It is Natasha, but we only see close-ups of her masked face, protective glasses and gloves, heavy breathing, her strain to get dressed. When ready the heavily dressed figure in a white overall opens the door into a room and disappears behind it.
--FUNERALZZI--
The cut is into a scene with a completely different mood - we see Natasha and Sergei driving inside their minivan, discussing business, singing and having a funny family squabble. They go to pick up coffins from an Italian company, where they meet colleagues as old friends, and play with the dog that “guards the coffins”. In the meanwhile Natasha gets on the phone to explain to a client how his mother, a caretaker, who died of Covid contracted from her employers, will be transported from Italy to Ukraine. At the end of the day Natasha and Sergei have food in the kitchen and talk over trivial things.
A static scene with a view from their peaceful balcony: we hear Natasha’s voice message, when she for the first time mentions the war.
We are home again, kitchen scenes in which Natasha talks about her having no more history, her flat in Ukraine was bombed, her suitcase with pictures and all memories of her mother thrown away by the Russian soldiers. She shows her father’s video message from the occupied territory. Natasha and Sergei also now share a flat with his ex-wife and a 23-year old daughter, Yulia, who fled from Kyiv. The tensions between 2 families are just a part of the story, but Natasha is building a warm relationship with Yulia and they hope to teach her into their business. One day when Yulia is bleaching Natasha’s blonde hair, Natasha tells Yulia about early years in Italy, living off charity meals and humiliations at her first job.
In the morning Natasha and Sergei take Yulia with them to work. What starts as a nice road trip turns for Yulia into a form of baptism into their job. They are taking an urn with ashes of a woman to her daughter, Iryna. We know that Iryna arrived in Italy days before the war started and now she is stranded. Iryna is roughly the same age as Yulia, but with the death of her mother she has lost her only family. Natasha meets her in the street, because Iryna, who now works as a domestic worker in her mother’s place is not allowed to bring the urn into her employer’s house. She sees her mom’s urn, on the sidewalk, as some Italian neighbour shouts from the balcony for Sergei to move his black van away from their house. Natasha hugs Iryna and says: “Now all the bad things are behind you, but you still need to work and struggle so very hard to make it here!”
Back from the trip Natasha brings the urns they picked up earlier to their living room. Yulia is upset about this and tells Natasha that she brought home the dead people on purpose. Natasha calmly replies that they are just the same people as we all are, and that this is what she does for a living - takes care of them. Already on the next trip we see Yulia in tears because the scene of another urn reminds her of her own passed grandmother.
In the meanwhile they get a repatriation case in Verona, where a domestic worker died at her workplace. The prosecutor holds the case for a criminal investigation. Natasha explains that it is not uncommon in their job to encounter cases of abuse at work. Eventually the body is released. Natasha goes to Verona, and washes her, puts on make-up and prepares to close the coffin, she cries as well, remembering her own mother. We now see Natasha changing in the morgue again: similar movements, same white overall and mask, but we now know who is behind it - a woman, who carries her own stories connected to the stories of her clients with empathy and care.
For Natasha and Sergei the times are very hard now - the work is hard to come by, questions of finance and growing debts, responsibility for Yulia force Natasha to go back to occasional cleaning jobs. But Natsaha’s main worry is about being able to help her disabled father to leave Ukraine or at least find a safe place. Will she be able to help him? Will they be able to stay in the business? Can she care for those she feels responsible for?
In the closing scene we see Natasha busy with making food for the whole family. As she cleans the table, she sees a moth, struggling to fly. With so typical of her warm smile and lulling voice she tries to pick it up: “I will let you go if you promise not to eat our food! Look, such a small creature and struggles so hard…even the tiniest creature wants to live!” As she takes it to the balcony, we hear her laugh and say: “Fly now! See, I saved someone today!"
