A Film by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel

Austria/Italy 2009, 100 mins., colour, Italien with English sub-titles

Patti, a circus woman living with her husband Walter in a trailer park on the outskirts of Rome finds Asia, a two year old girl abandoned in a park. With the help of Tairo, a teenager living in an adjacent container, Patti begins to search for the girl’s mother and tries to provide the child a temporary home.

La Pivellina is a film about the cosmos of outcasts in present-day Italy but similar circumstances could be foundanywhere in Europe. The film is a tale of courage and discrimination, of loss and togetherness and a stark look beyond the corrugated-iron fence of a community abandoned by and isolated from the rest of society.

La Pivellina is Austria’s submission to the selection committee for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards 2011.