Shun Li and the Poet

Shun Li is a Chinese woman working in a textile workshop near Rome, paying off the debt that will let her bring her young son over from China. One day her employers move her to Chioggia, a small fishing town on the Venetian lagoon, to work behind the bar of an old osteria. The regulars are elderly fishermen who drink, play cards and argue about everything. Among them is Bepi, a gentle Yugoslav-born fisherman everyone calls "the poet", who has lived in Chioggia for decades. An unlikely friendship starts between them, and the town does not like it at all.

Andrea Segre came from documentary, and it shows in the best way: the film is patient, observant and full of real faces. The lagoon is shot in fog and soft grey light, water everywhere, a place that feels both beautiful and closed. Zhao Tao, the muse of Jia Zhangke, is quietly wonderful as Shun Li, and she won the David di Donatello for Best Actress. Rade Šerbedžija gives Bepi a melancholy, old-world dignity.

It is a small film about two immigrants from very different generations who recognise something of themselves in each other, and about how quickly a community turns a friendship into gossip. Nothing dramatic happens for long stretches, and that is the point. Delicate, poetic, and very moving. One of the most underseen Italian films of its decade.