Tumours, spotlight on 'children's leukaemia' at the Cannes Film Festival

There is everyday life, taken by surprise, pierced suddenly by the news of illness. There is the suspended time of families, of parents and grandparents, of siblings and aunts and uncles, of friends and teachers, of study and sports companions. There is fatigue: the fatigue of pathology but also the fatigue of waiting, of life confined for long periods in a ward, of not knowing what tomorrow will be or whether there will be a future. And, also, there is enough material to write about it, to tell. Yes, but tell what? Certainly, the disease: that acute lymphoblastic leukaemia which is the aggressive blood cancer 'of children'. But - above all - much more must be told: the experience that in those lives suddenly diverted in their own course continues to be there, albeit in a different way. And which brings with it the new - precious - relationships of the microcosm full of meanings called therapeutic relationship. With doctors, first of all, but also with nurses and other health workers.

There was enough for all this to give rise to a book - 'Tante belle persone', written by Paolo Tallini, Pietro's father who faced the disease for three years - and the resulting documentary 'Sangue Bianco' (White Blood), selected and presented at the Cannes Film Festival 2026 in the Spazio Cinecittà (Italian Pavillon). Promoting it, under the patronage of the Maria Letizia Verga Foundation for the study and treatment of children's leukaemia, the pharmaceutical company Amgen.

Three protagonists: Lorenzo and Jessica - two young people who encountered the disease when they were 12 and 17 years old and are now cured, and Paolo Tallini himself. It is he who tells the story of his son Pietro, who passed away in 2023. And he has chosen to do so with that emblematic title, 'So many beautiful people', whose figure is, in any case, hope. The same key-word of the 'short film' brought to Cannes and created by writer and screenwriter Morena Rossi, directed by Lorenzo Cioglia. The oxymoron of life in pathology, of the blinding and reflecting white of the background in which the protagonists tell their stories - which alternates with the red of the now 'sick' blood -: people too young to be able to combine their existences with even the thought of death. All this is in the title and in the alternation of 'black and white' (the story of the illness) and 'colour' (life resuming, photos, memories, projects). Jessica, Lorenzo and Pietro rebuild together with their families that normality suddenly cracked, as well as the ability to smile even in the most dramatic moments.

Of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia there are 800 new cases a year in Italia and about 400 are diagnosed in paediatric age from 0 to 18 years. Today, 92% of children overcome it, but percentages - doctors and researchers remind us - do not apply to the individual: 'a person either heals or does not heal and the borderline remains absolute'. "If you think that at the beginning of the 1970s chemo-radiotherapy treatments allowed cure rates of 30%-50%, you can understand why this pathology is now considered the paradigm of successes in paediatric haemato-oncology," explains Carmelo Rizzari, Director of Clinical Research and Phase 1 Paediatrics at Fondazione Irccs San Giovanni dei Tintori Monza. A lot has been achieved thanks to research: the introduction of innovative drugs such as tyrosine kinase inhibitors, drug-conjugated antibodies and new Car-T cell therapies are changing the treatment scenario. "But while it is important to recount the successes," Rizzari continues, "it is also necessary to look at the defeats experienced by patients, their families, and us healthcare professionals, and to continue to stimulate research.

Certainly, successful is that therapeutic alliance and teamwork that especially in the case of paediatric patients develops between specialists and families. 'I felt compelled to tell our story,' explains Paolo Tallini, 'and I wrote a book to give back what Pietro received. In this experience I realised that doctors must accompany their technical ability with the human component: the relationship between these two elements, especially for pathologies like the one my son Pietro faced, is '50-50', because without empathy and relationship we risk not completing these care paths'.