They are just 15 years old, they are little more than children, some do not reach the meter and 55 centimeters in height, others barely reach 1 and 70, they twirl lightly but have a muscular strength that makes Olympic wrestlers look like three-seven players. Theirs is an unparalleled dedication to training. But at what price? The young gymnasts protagonists of Corpo libero, a TV series based on the novel of the same name by Ilaria Bernardini (Mondadori), experience all the tension of those who train to win. Starting on Wednesday 25 October, from 21.20 pm on Rai2, in three early evenings, the series is a coming-of-age story with strong thriller tones, but also investigates being girls and women, an exploration of the relationship between body and mind, never really free. The protagonist is an extraordinary group of teenage gymnasts (also very good as actresses), which includes Alessia De Falco, Giada Savi, Federica Cuomo, Eva Iurlaro, Giada Pirozzi together with Antonia Truppo, Filippo Nigro and Barbara Chichiarelli. A bloody hand. Soft steps in the snow. The dim light of a torch disappearing into the woods. It is with this scene of great impact that the trailer of Corpo libero opens. At the center of the story is a group of very young girls who dream of achieving fame and glory. Through the narrative voice of Martina, a promising young woman who returns to practice sport after a bad accident, we discover the world of artistic gymnastics. The girl, together with Carla, Nadia, Anna and Benedetta, heads from Naples to Abruzzo for the Winter Fox tournament. Locked in a hotel between training and competitions, the gymnasts begin to wage war with each other. Until the body of a young woman is found in the middle of the woods. The police try to put the pieces of the puzzle together and it is Martina who reconstructs the seven days of stay in the hotel and before the murder, revealing peculiarities and rather disturbing backgrounds. Deep down at heart, Martina (Alessia De Falco) hates gymnastics, not only because of the oppressive regimen of training and deprivation that female athletes have to undergo in order to achieve perfection. At the same time, he can't help it, because for his family his talent is a chance for redemption. Coming back from an injury that kept her out of action for almost a year, Martina is silent and reserved, different from the two superstars Carla and Nadia (Giada Savi and Federica Cuomo) who impose themselves on the rest of the team and in particular on Anna and Benedetta (Giada Pirozzi and Eva Iurlaro), cruelly nicknamed "the useless". The series is co-produced by Indigo Film and Network movie, in co-production with ZDFneo, in collaboration with RAI Fiction and Paramount+, in association with All3Media International. A six-episode thriller premiered in the parallel section of the Rome Film Fest last year and aired only on Paramount+, now free-to-air on a generalist TV Rai, which among other things is among the producers with Rai Fiction. The direction is by Cosima Spender and Valerio Bonelli of the successful docu-series SanPa (Netflix), while the screenplay was written by Ilaria Bernardini herself together with Chiara Barzini, Ludovica Rampoldi and the ex-gymnast Giordana Mari. If at 17 or 18 they haven't noticed you yet, Martina explains to the detective who follows the investigation (Barbara Chichiarelli), they will never notice you
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