If I don't come back tomorrow, Gino Cecchettin: "Narrating pain as a path to salvation"

Accepting that my daughter's story would become a film was not easy. Gino Cecchettin was a guest at the 21st Rome Film Festival on the occasion of the screening of Paola Randi's film If Tomorrow I Don't Go Back on the story of his daughter Giulia Cecchettin. He said he had found a decisive motivation in the words of a girl he met on the plane, who had thanked him because, thanks to Giulia's story, she had managed to stay alive. An encounter that made him understand once again how talking about pain can help those who listen to recognize themselves in that experience and glimpse a possibility of salvation. "Some things we would often like to keep privately", he explained, but sharing one's story has become part of a larger commitment, that of the Giulia Cecchettin Foundation: to bring a message of awareness in an increasingly widespread way in the community and in the country. So that pain does not remain closed in the individual dimension, but can be transformed into a tool for understanding, preventing and changing.

The meaning of the film for Gino Cecchettin goes beyond the reconstruction of a tragedy. The objective is to tell Giulia in its entirety, not only through the last day of her life, but giving back space to the girl, her dreams and the experiences in which other young people can recognize themselves. This is the direction that the father hopes for If Tomorrow I Don't Return, directed by Paola Randi and freely inspired by the book Cara Giulia, written by Gino Cecchettin himself with Marco Franzoso. “The purpose of a film like this is when it leaves something to those who see it,” he said, hoping that viewers will not only learn about his family's story, but will also question themselves. The goal is to trigger an awareness capable of translating into concrete behaviors: to become, each in their own daily lives, "agents of change" in a society that needs it.