La Balena di Rossellini origins from one of the most beautiful Roberto Rossellini’s dreams, an exemplary project for his autorial path. The film conceived, but never realized, by Rossellini took shape in his notes after a trip to Chile conducted in May of 1971, a trip made to conduct an interview-portrait of Salvador Allende, then actually carried out by the director of “Rome, Open City”. October 28, 1971: Rossellini, back from Santiago, Chile, reads a newspaper reports of a beached whale on the Pacific coast near a poor village inhabited by fishermen. From this simple news comes a film script for a fable about wealth and poverty. A film whose shooting Rossellini would have been entrusted to the young student Claudio Bondì, just graduated from the Experimental Center of Cinematography.