The adventurous story of the legendary photographer Mirella Ricciardi, who captured the vanishing beauty of life with her camera and now wishes to remain hidden behind the lens. Born in Kenya to European parents, she grew up amid the optimism and contradictions of a fading empire.

Her photography from East Africa, later published under the title VANISHING AFRICA, brought her fame, but her work was also controversially received, as it was shaped by a colonial perspective. Now over 90 years old, she does not wish to show her face and accompanies the film with her voice and her memories. MIRELLA deals with power, beauty and loss, and is a portrait shaped as much by absence as by presence.