DOI: 10.20375/0000-0011-48a2-5
title: Dafne

description: Abstract: 
This is the story of Dafne, a young woman with Down syndrome, with a job she loves, loving parents, and many friends. However, the sudden loss of her mother shatters her stability and her everyday life. To cope with the grief, Dafne, and her father embark on a path towards acceptance, and such a tragic event turns into a chance to build a new, transparent relationship. 

Details: 
Dafne is a thirty-five-year-old woman with Down syndrome, spending her last days of vacation with her parents. In the first scenes, we see her walking home with her mom, chatting, and hurrying to go to the party they were all attending that night. When they got home, her dad, Luigi, had fallen asleep on the couch, watching TV. On the next day, they were packing their bags and getting ready to drive home when her mom remembered that she had left their clean sheets in the laundry room and left. Since she is taking a long time, Dafne goes to look up for her but comes back screaming for help because something has happened to her mother. At the hospital, Dafne’s mother passed away not long after that. 
Dafne and her dad are visibly shaken. She acts out, cries, and gets angry at everyone: her dad, the nurse, her uncle, and her aunt, who came as soon as they heard about the tragic event. That same night, they all go spend the night at an old family house in the town where her mother would have wanted to be buried. At the funeral, many people show up, and among them is a good friend of Dafne, Viola, also a girl with Down syndrome, who tries to comfort her. 
A couple of days later, Dafne and Luigi go back to their house, their job, and their regular life. Her father owns a shop, while Dafne works at a supermarket. She loves her job and has a very good relationship with her colleagues, who show their support to her as soon as she comes back to work. She even becomes friends with a new colleague, Camilla, after reproaching her because of her smoking.
Dafne is also a part of an association where people with Down syndrome reunite. One night, while dancing the tango with Viola at the association, another young man, her old boyfriend, approaches and asks her to dance. While they dance, he asks her to go out with him, but Dafne resolutely rejects him. 
Dafne’s relationship with her dad is a bit rough, and she has to face many difficulties. He is still having trouble accepting the death of his wife: he stops working, his hands start trembling, and he sometimes does things without a reason. Meanwhile, Dafne looks for independence, and even though it is hard for her to cope with her dad’s problems, she still tries to cheer him up. 
So, she suggests they go on a backpacking trip to visit her mom’s grave, and Luigi, at first reluctantly, accepts. They take a train, then walk on trails, and end up spending the night at a pension in the country. There, while Dafne helps with some technical issues with the computer, Luigi talks to the owner and confesses that when Dafne was born, it was very hard for him to accept her daughter’s condition and that his wife deserved most of the credit for her upbringing, but that as a grown-up she surprised him with her independence and abilities. 
During the trip, they have some deep conversations, in which she confesses that she has been going to church every day to pray, that she had a boyfriend, but that now she is happily single. Sometimes, she is harsh towards her dad: she tells him that sometimes she is ashamed of him and reproaches him about his drinking and smoking habits and his missing self-esteem. However, she also jokes around and tells him that he can always count on her. They also discuss Dafne’s dream to buy a house for the association with her friend Viola, but Luigi, with his realism, doubts the feasibility of the plan. 
Finally, they reach the old family house. They sit in her mother’s old room and share some memories about her. The final scene shows a particularly touching moment in which Dafne gives her father a deflated balloon that her mom had blown and that she had kept because it contained her breath. Then, Luigi bursts into tears.