Land der Wunder

Gelsomina lives with her family on a farm near Lago di Bolsena in the 1980s. Her father had left Germany and was trying to make ends meet by keeping bees. The beekeeping business urgently needed to be renovated, but there was a lack of money everywhere. So Gelsomina enters the family in a TV show, because the prize money would put an end to all their worries.

The beauty of Alice Rohrwacher's second feature film is its narrative style, which is free from all the constraints of mainstream cinema. Just as Hélène Louvart's camera constantly opens up new spaces and unusual perspectives, the story of Gelsomina allows for different perspectives and interpretations as well as free associations: LAND OF MIRACLES is an - autobiographically - coloured drop-out story, a tale about growing up, a reflection on the disappearance of old traditions and the arrival of new times in the form of bad television from the early days of Berlusconian atrocities.