The Middle Room tells, through an intimate and deeply human gaze, the possibility of building a family beyond blood ties, and across cultural, economic, ethnic, and generational differences. Mietta is a seventy-year-old retired woman who lives alone in an elegant neighborhood of Milan. She was once a juvenile court judge, but she has never had a family of her own. Everything changes when Ibu, a Senegalese friend, asks her for temporary hospitality for himself and his wife Bousso, who has just arrived in Italy pregnant. With the birth of the child, Mietta decides to radically transform her life: she buys a larger apartment for all of them, turning what was meant to be a temporary arrangement into a long-term cohabitation. While Ibu works and spends most of his time away from home, Mietta and Bousso find themselves sharing the same space without truly knowing each other. One is young, facing motherhood and displacement in a foreign country; the other confronts the fears and fragilities of aging. The film follows their experience over several years, as little Khadim grows up, revealing tensions, silences, and small conflicts that test the fragile domestic balance while
