With the rowing machine in Segre's "pure beauty" Venice

An oar plows through the water of the lagoon in an unreal silence, broken by voices that seem to arrive from empty streets, from shores returned to the flight of the seagulls. It is that of the boat of Elena "Nena" Almansi, 24 years old, one of the faces of "Molecole" by Andrea Segre, the documentary that will be the protagonist on September 1st of the pre-opening of the 77th Venice Film Festival. Images often collected without the interviewees themselves noticing, which represent a sort of serendipity: Segre wanted to document Venice wounded by tourism and high water in November and suddenly found himself telling the imponderable, the city sunk in lockdown . "During the first boat trips - says Almansi, rowing champion and daughter of rowers - she would film me asking me questions about tourism, about how a Venetian lived it, about the damage caused by 'big water'". Then it is the fate of the city and of Italy struggling with Covid to reshuffle the script. First the extinction among the controversies of the Carnival, then the lagoon that becomes off-limit. From a journey through memories and the reappropriation of family roots, "Molecole" becomes, between February and April, the diary of images of a city that is entrenched, acquires the profile of a motionless island inaccessible to 'outsiders'. Yet of those silent days, of those almost daily boat rides with Segre, with the oar to govern the waves of the Giudecca canal between a chat and the other, of the spritzes consumed calmly in the bars, "Nena" has no memory negative. Rather. "I didn't see a bad city, it didn't impress me - he explains -. Everyone was talking to me about a ghostly Venice, but for the first time I saw how unique it is". The remoteness of the tourists has returned to the lagoon historic center its essence of pure beauty. "People distract you from the overall design of a reality that has been in front of your eyes for millennia - he underlines - and which, looked at without distractions, ends up overwhelming you like the landscapes of Romanticism, leaving you powerless". Deprived by the ciabatting of visitors, it becomes "the city that lived before me - she observes - and that will also live after me. I have the privilege of being inside it, of seeing what will never die". "Nena" almost regrets those days, with the canals once again shining with transparent waters and the lagoon taking back the shades of the sky. "Seeing the tourists around, uneducated and unaware of what surrounds them - he adds - unfortunately made me resurface indignation for a city continually squeezed out of its energies, to which no one ever gives water in exchange". When Segre told the rower that her face would appear on the screens of the Venice Film Festival she didn't want to believe it. "I've never done - he confesses laughing, announcing that he will be present at the premiere - such an experience". The fate of "Nena" is and remains on the sea. After the premiere of "Molecole" in the Sala Darsena of the Mostra del Cinema, Almansi will return to challenge the lagoon by participating with the brown caorlina in the Historical Regatta on 6 September. However the race goes, for her it will still be a victory, after many battles for the equalization of the regatta prizes between men and women. "The Municipality has promised us that the first classified among the women's boats will receive at least the same prize given to the fourth classified of the men - he says -. We will see if at least this year they will keep their promise".