At sixteen, I lost my job as an apprentice carpenter. I didn’t fully understand the reasons behind it—maybe they weren’t important then, and perhaps they still aren’t now—but it hurt deeply to accept that I had lost what I thought was the job of my life. I had to roll up my sleeves and find another one to secure a future on this planet, yet I felt lost and terrified that I had no real talent in which I could truly “excel.”

From that moment, a lingering inner doubt arose: on a personal level, was I ignorant? Or even stupid?

Over time, I learned that it was all a matter of perspective: no genius can know everything, but a genius is someone who has mastered their own field in depth. As for the second question, the literal definition of “stupid” describes a person who causes harm or distress to others intentionally, without gaining anything in return. I believe I can safely say I don’t belong to either of these categories, although I wish I had known that back then.

So, I decided to counter my ignorance by leaning on my innate curiosity. Between one job search and another, I began reading various authors considered classics of literature—Hemingway, Poe, Hugo, Dostoevsky—and watching a different film every day. My goal wasn’t to be better or superior to others, but rather a personal challenge: to understand what had made a classic endure, experiencing the emotion of a first viewing or reading and then identifying the elements and style that had defined it and cemented it in the collective imagination.

As the years went by, I became increasingly convinced that this passion shouldn’t remain just a temporary lifeline. I wanted it to become a purpose in life: just as some people had given me emotions, I wished to give them to others who might be going through even harder times than mine, offering them a brief escape from their problems. This helped me answer the question of what I truly wanted to do with my life. But it also raised another: how can a “simple” combination of certain images and sounds trigger such visceral reactions within a viewer?

A key influence was the bond with my two childhood friends, who also had vivid imaginations for creating comic and grotesque situations featuring some of the local “wildlife.” As our stories evolved, simply telling them aloud no longer satisfied us. To bring our ideas to life, we improvised with video editing, creating short comic sketches by re-cutting and re-dubbing scenes from famous films, adapting them to our own context. What finally pushed me toward post-production was seeing the work of my classmates at the CISA film school: given the same raw footage to edit, twenty completely different works emerged. That made me realize that, in this field, I would never truly have a rival—not because I believe I’m the best, but because I trust that if someone relies on me, it’s because they appreciate my sensitivity and the choices I make.

That was the moment I fell in love with the editing process: taking individual elements and combining them to create a unity whose ultimate purpose is to evoke one or more emotions. To me, it was pure magic. And like real magic, how could it possibly work? Make no mistake—I’m not talking about mere technical skill. With enough practice, anyone can learn to handle cuts and crossfades. No, what I was asking myself was: how does the brain actually accept them?

In 1922, the pioneer of Russian montage theory, Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov (1899–1970), demonstrated with what came to be known as the “Kuleshov Effect” how a viewer’s perception could be shaped by a particular sequence of shots. He filmed the actor Ivan Mozzhukhin’s face, always with the same neutral expression, and intercut it with different images—such as a beautiful woman or a young girl lying in a coffin.

The juxtaposition created a cognitive phenomenon: the audience’s perception of the man’s emotional state and intentions shifted depending on the following shot. They interpreted his expression differently based on the context. This worked because the association triggered a stimulus-response reaction: the woman or the dead child provided contextual information, prompting the viewer to project their own emotions onto the man’s expression, driven by the expectation set by the stimulus that required some kind of “resolution.”

In short: depending on the context, we give different interpretations of the reality before us.

Ultimately, we apply this principle constantly in daily life. Since the dawn of humanity, our brains have developed to make connections in order to find solutions that allowed us to survive. Each of us has our own personality and set of experiences—no matter how big or small—that enable us to interpret reality, and it is through this process that the brain identifies with a work of art, gathering as much information as possible to form a complete picture and to express emotion in response. Moreover, when we approach a work of art like cinema, we tacitly agree to suspend our disbelief, and depending on our openness to fiction, we momentarily accept the existence of the universe we see on screen.

In conclusion, what I have learned is that this world holds countless points of view, which become stories, and those stories keep changing context—and the context, in turn, influences the original point of view we started from. Take my personal story at the beginning: I still don’t know whether I’m ignorant or not. But I feel at peace having found the job of my dreams, and from that context, I know that the most important emotion right now is simply being happy.