At times, it felt self-indulgent complaining about a lost opportunity to screen before major press knowing how much others had lost.  Restrictions loosened and we set another premier date, this time in Florence at the Cinema La Compagnia founded by Tuscany's regional government. The second lockdown came. Finally, in August 2020, we had our first official screening in Venice, a novel 5-day film event called Barch-In. Instead of cars, people simply pulled up in their boats and watched a series of hand-picked films (including ours) on a big screen in front of the Arsenale, Venice's historic shipyards. Though we couldn't attend, our film received a warm reception.

Through autumn we screened in a handful of select movie theaters, Rome, Florence, Rimini and in a few Italian festivals. And we received our first award for Best Documentary at the 2021 Caorle Independent Film Festival that had come back, wobbly but alive, from a year-long hiatus. We were back in the game and with our Italian theatrical distributor's support on the back-end, albeit cautiously optimistic, we're looking ahead and plotting next year's round of screenings in movie theaters. Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul as Kahlil Gibran wrote. Hopefully navigating in more peaceful waters in the year ahead.