By Rafa Sales Ross

When famed Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio called his friend, fellow Italian auteur Marco Tullio Giordana ("Best of Youth"), about a project he'd been working on for years, the director jumped at it. The resulting film is "The Life Apart," which will premiere out of competition at this year's Locarno Film Festival, where Giordana will also receive a Lifetime Achievement Pardo.

Inspired by Mariapia Veladiano’s acclaimed novel of the same name, “The Life Apart” is set in the Italian city of Vicenza between the 1980s and 2000s, where a young girl is rejected by her mother because of a large birthmark on her face. Rebecca, played by Sara Ciocca as a child and Beatrice Barison as a young woman, finds solace in the piano, a talent she discovers with the help of her aunt and patroness Erminia (Sonia Bergamasco).

“[Bellocchio] asked me to read the script and I loved it. Then I read the novel and fell in love with it, too, so I rewrote the script so that I could wear it like a life jacket and feel comfortable in it,” Giordana tells Variety of when she was first approached with the project. In addition to penning the script, Bellocchio is also producing the film with production partner Simone Gattoni through Kavac Film in association with Rai Cinema and the Veneto Film Commission.