Vengo anch'io (2018)

Corrado is a social worker who is dependent on antidepressants and runs a residential facility for troubled young people. On the birthday of Aldo, one of the residents, a fire breaks out at the facility. Corrado is not fired, but is forced to resign. He therefore decides to return to his hometown in Puglia to kill himself. Aldo, now an adult, decides to join him on the trip so Corrado can take him to Pescara, where his father lives and is waiting for him. Before setting off, they arrange a ride through an app with Maria, who is released from prison that very day after serving a two-year sentence. During the journey, Corrado learns that Maria was arrested for trying to kill the man with whom she had a daughter twenty years earlier. She is now returning to Puglia to watch her daughter compete in a rowing event. During a stop, Corrado and Maria make love. Afterwards, Maria finds an old photograph of him and realizes that he is the man with whom she had a daughter twenty years ago and who then disappeared. When they reach Pescara, Aldo meets his father, who has started a new family and does not want Aldo to stay with him, insisting that he make a new life for himself away from the family auto shop. Back in the car, Aldo locks himself inside, and Corrado reveals—making Maria furious—that Aldo’s father had never written to him; in fact, he had shown no interest in him at all. To keep the boy from feeling lonely, however, the social worker had written him a letter every year and sent him a gift in his father’s name. Once Aldo has calmed down, he lets Corrado and Maria—who have meanwhile avenged him by beating up his father—back into the car, and the journey resumes. To make amends, Corrado throws all the letters out of the moving car. When they arrive in Puglia, Maria discovers that her daughter, Lorenza, has quit the rowing team, tired of her teammates’ constant teasing because her mother had gone to prison. With Corrado’s help, Maria manages to rekindle Lorenza’s desire to compete; Corrado presents himself to Lorenza as her father. Having stolen a canoe for the upcoming Sant’Oronzo Trophy, Lorenza tries to rejoin her former teammates. They accept her, except for one girl, who angrily throws her out for having abandoned them on the day of an important regional competition. Once again encouraged by her mother, Lorenza forms a new crew with Maria, Corrado, and Aldo. The team is unable to finish the race, but Aldo, anticipating the event, had fitted a small motor to the canoe, bringing the team to victory. At the awards ceremony, Lorenza reveals the trick they used and gives the trophy to the winning team, her friends’ crew, and makes peace with them. That night, during an intimate moment, Maria and Corrado grow close again, and she manages to accept him as Lorenza’s father. In the morning, Corrado has disappeared, but he has left a note revealing that he is not Lorenza’s father, that he pretended to be so to give her strength, and that, after all the lies, he is going to kill himself. Aldo, Maria, and Lorenza (who nevertheless continues to call him Dad) reach the bridge just after Corrado has thrown himself into the sea. They rush to the beach and find him, still alive, having been carried back to shore by the waves. The four then decide to join forces as a family, bound not by blood but by their shared experiences. In the finale, it is revealed that Maria is expecting a child.