During the late 1960s, Emilio Sidoti, an elementary school teacher in Albisola, decided to make some movies with his students in order to develop their critical gaze in a free and radical expressive pathway. This was the start of “Cinema dei ragazzi,” Italy's first experience of “school and cinema;” it generated over twenty movies, all shot in Super8, and most of them were entirely written, directed, and edited by the children. Starting with the material of the time, this unique experience is put into relation with the present time, as the children of back then - who today are adults - are asked to recount the impression it left on them. Among the cases that clearly show the extraordinary consonance between the children's imagination and their vision as adults, and others that reveal the break between the time of childhood and present-day reality, existential pathways are drawn and emerge against the backdrop of the cultural and social transformations of recent decades, that involve a corner of Liguria but reflect what was happening throughout the country.