As she gazes boldly into the camera, nothing in this older woman’s face reveals that her naked body falls outside society’s standards of beauty. It is the face of Anna Maria Pes, who in this film tells the story of her scoliosis, a curvature of the spine.
Accompanied by an experimental soundtrack, the film first recounts how the condition was discovered, through written text and footage of an old-fashioned treatment room. Interspersed are recent shots—nostalgistically edited—of Pes walking along the beach, the place where she finds peace and strength. There, she speaks into a microphone, describing in her own poetic words the humiliating treatments she underwent as a child and teenager at the hands of male doctors who saw her only as a medical case. These visual musings and painful memories culminate in a liberating dance in which she fully accepts and embraces her own body.
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