Giovanni Soldi moves in 2018 to Australia, to Kalgoorlie, a mining outpost in the heart of the Western Desert, with the intention of participating in an exploratory mining mission. Back in Italy under Covid, he completes the literature studies and enrolles in the Master’s program in film production and writing at Luiss University. After his Master’s he participates in major international productions such as “Ripley” and “Equalizer III” as an executive assistant. In the meantime, he collaborates with Matteo Caccia by writing with him some episodes of the podcast aired on Radio24 that had as topic his experience in Australian mines. In 2022 he collaborates on the editing of the Silver Ribbon-winning documentary “Franco Battiato – La voce del padrone”. “Hidden time” is his first short-film.

This short film was born out of an encounter I had with a child intent on hiding a ten-thousand-year-old treasure in the hollow of a tree. That child was convinced that he could hide time and then retrieve it when he became an adult. This idea struck me greatly, the idea that he could manipulate time as if it were an object. Only the mind of a child could achieve such freedom of thought. So I thought about what that same child might have felt when he grew up, when he would return to that hollow tree, now aware of the things of the world, deprived of any illusion, forced to confront that childhood dream that had possessed him, that dream of carefreeness and immortality that is gone. Now all that is left to replace it is pain.