It tells three stories of as many patients with different therapeutic paths, but a common denominator, the hope of checking mate on multiple myeloma, the web series “Tic Toc, the gentleness of time”, online from 8 September on the Facebook page and on the portal Gsk ‘Multiple Myeloma and Tu’. The work, with a total duration of 25 minutes, signed by Enzo Dino, born from an idea by Gsk and DRmovie, was designed for a serial distribution of 9 episodes of 2 minutes each and published weekly. This was announced in a note by the pharmaceutical company. The protagonists of the web series – Ottavio (Michele Franco), Fabio (Gianmaria Villani) and Cinzia (Manuela Grippi) – are a mature man and two people who have a little less years. They meet and bond, perhaps forever, because of multiple myeloma, a blood disease that affects 5,800 people in Italy every year. Ottavio, Fabio and Cinzia have different stories and experiences, as well as the path of illness, but they find themselves sharing, between the chemotherapy rooms and the corridors of the ward, the anxieties and hopes of an illness that ‘often raises its head’. “The message we want to convey – says Maria Sofia Rosati, medical director of oncoemtology in Gsk – is one of hope. Multiple myeloma is not a walk in the park, it’s a subtle disease that hides and then comes back when you think you have beaten it. The positive fact is that in the last 10 years, research has made a huge leap forward: new targets and new drugs have been found, combinations have been tested, cocktails of increasingly effective therapies, and others are being studied. Our goal, by sharing these short videos, lasting a couple of minutes, is to reach as many people as possible. The three stories are realistic, the actors play real patients. Clinicians were involved in drafting the screenplay to be scientifically impeccable and so that the same dialogues between doctors and patients were “. “The web series – observes Elena Rotari, owner of DRmovie – comes from the desire to create an audiovisual project that can be a pioneer of important messages, such as prevention. The idea has materialized in these 9 episodes on multiple myeloma, designed for social media, aiming for a positive virality, to demystify cancer as an incurable disease “. With DRmovie, GSK began collaborating more than two years ago – explains the company note – supporting the film ‘The places of hope’, signed by Enzo Dino, always on the theme of cancer. Last year she was also the promoter, together with the Women of Oncology association, of the award for the best scientific film at the first edition of the Bardolino Film Festival, an award that went to ‘What will be’, by Francesco Bruni, which tells the story of a man – played by Kim Rossi Stuart – who finds himself having to deal with leukemia. “What pushed me most to embrace the project – recalls the director Enzo Dino – was being able to talk, without taboos, about oncological disease, telling the clinical and therapeutic path of the characters, giving the story lightness and optimism. I really liked the idea of showing the viewer something dreamlike. Thus was born the image of a clock that accompanies the entire narrative arc of the story as if it were the unconscious part of the characters, as if the beating of the clock hands led them daily to a continuous reflection with themselves and with the time that passes. But also with the fear of dying and wasting time. Another component – continues the director – was to characterize the characters of oncologists by giving them empathy and a profound humanity in dealing with the sick. I believe that “Tic Toc” is above all a love story, in this case, the love of a wife towards her husband and of a sick father towards his teenage daughter. “” The character of Ottavio – says the actor Michele Franco – made me think a lot about everything we drive out of fear. We exorcise the fears that tumors bring, upsetting the rhythm of our lives, because it is terrible to imagine that everything personal, private and public is involved in a brutal and rapid way. Living it in Ottavio, I felt the enormous anguish that a sick person has to endure. Doctors and treatments, however, make him understand that his life has not been interrupted by the disease. The chronicity of multiple myeloma allows him a future, to be shared with loved ones and with an important quality of life. I realized, going deeper into the character, that his reactions would be mine, should I find myself facing the trauma of cancer. I was mirrored in him, both in fear and in hope “. GSK – explains the company in the note – strongly believes in the language of cinema to increase awareness of the disease and, more generally, to talk about difficult and emotionally very strong as an oncological pathology can be. This on multiple myeloma is the first surgery. Another web series is currently being edited, in which the topics will be equally delicate: ovarian and endometrial cancers, gynecological neoplasms that affect the intimate sphere of women, with an even greater psychological impact if possible. .The web series is online on the Facebook page of the portal The Multiple Myeloma and you (1) The Multiple Myeloma and you | Facebook starting Thursday 8 September.