Caroline Russo irons her wavy hair flat and enjoys art. Her classmates at school are Mayflower descendants and her father doesn't like her drawings of Michelangelo's David. While researching her family tree for school, young Caroline discovers a mysterious woman who she believes is a gangster. Caroline questions her family, but no one will talk about the mysterious woman. Her father stews, her aunt smirks, her teenage sister is date-absorbed and her grandmother is preoccupied dreaming of marriage proposals from Perry Como and watching old home movies of her native Sicily. Such are the conflicts in CHE BELLA FAMIGLIA, a short film about a girl's quest to discover her personal and cultural identity in an Italian-American family.
—Elaine Glusac for FRA NOI