International Competition

 

After a Revolution2 

After A Revolution 

by Giovanni Buccomino (doc, UK/Italy, 2021, 121'), Italian premiere

In Libya, a brother and sister invested heart and soul for their country during the 2011 revolution, but each from a different side of the front: he supported Qaddafi, she fought for the "rebels." Now she belongs to the ruling class and fights to defend the oppressed and rehabilitate people like her brother. The consequences of the revolution are far from over, and brother and sister continue their fight for the country they love, but when they both receive threats from all sides, they decide to flee to Tunisia. There they observe the repercussions of war and the fragility of democracy as their disillusionment grows. When your country has been destroyed, how can you rebuild from the rubble?

 

 

 Bucolic2

Bukolika (Bucolic)

by Karol Pałka (doc, Poland, 2021, 70'), Italian premiere

Danusia and her daughter Basia live far away from the modern world, in tune with the rhythm and laws of nature, among animals and the spirits of the dead. Their enclave brings peace and a sense of security, but also builds within them a longing for contact with other people. Bucolic is a parable about people living in a different way, an affectionate observation that invites curiosity about their world and a desire for a closer look.

 

 

Divas5

Divas

by Máté Kőrösi (doc, Hungary, 2021, 79'), Italian premiere

Szani, Tina and Emese are three misfit girls who call themselves “Divas”, but they are actually insecure millennials with very different personalities. Szani is particularly vocal, very invested in her looks, lives alone and works in a karaoke bar. Tina is more quiet and spiritual, she’s vegan and practices yoga. Emese is probably the most restless and the least confident of the three. Throughout the process until their final exams, they let director Máté Kőrösi in with his camera, to take a look of what’s behind their perfect make-up. Meanwhile, the girls prepare themselves to move on to their adulthood.

 

 

Where Are We Headed2 

Kuda my edem (Where Are We Headed)

by Ruslan Fedotov (doc, Russia/Belarus, 2021, 63'), Italian premiere

The Moscow metro is one of the ten largest subways in the world. It covers more than 400 km and welcomes 7 million passengers a day. Many stations resemble exhibition halls or cathedrals, with the dramatic history of Soviet Russia depicted on its walls. Nowadays, the underground reality of the subway reflects the reality of the world above. This is a road movie encapsulated in the Moscow metro system and filmed over the course of one year: a documentary film that observes cultural and social issues in modern Russia. It is a study with elements of absurdist tragicomedy, with no central characters; instead, it is a wide-angle portrait of society with all the joys and challenges that it entails.

 

 

 MyanmarDiaries2                                  

Myanmar Diaries

by The Myanmar Film Collective (doc, Myanmar/The Netherlands/Norway, 2022, 70'), Italian premiere


Ten short films by young anonymous Burmese filmmakers documenting the junta’s brutality and the courageous resistance to it. The film shows how Myanmar goes from the military coup to nation-wide protests and civil disobedience, to barbaric repression where thousands of peaceful protesters are imprisoned and murdered, to a growing popular armed revolt against this monstrous military junta. Moving organically back and forth between documentary and fiction, the film offers a seamless flow in which the filmmakers find innovative creative ways to keep their protagonists anonymous. A film of extreme and necessary denunciation in a time when Myanmar has almost disappeared from the news headlines around the world.

 

 

penelope mon amour2

Pénélope, mon amour (Penelope, My Love)

di Claire Doyon (doc, France, 2021, 88'), Italian premiere

For 18 years Claire has been filming Pénélope, her daughter with autism. The film tells of different stages: the shock of the diagnosis, the declaration of war, the abdication of arms, to finally accept and discover a different mode of existence. What place does the body of Pénélope, and in general the body of the autistic person occupy in social space, and what place do we give it? What landscape can cinema invent to design a hospitable space, the dream of a world allowing the invisible to become visible? While Pénélope keeps being what she is, her mother keeps questioning who she is. Probably the answer to the question is precisely in this endless quest.

 

 

SOY LIBRE2  

Soy Libre

by Laure Portier (doc, France, Belgium, 2021, 78'), Italian premiere

Fresh out from a juvenile detention centre, Arnaud longs for just one thing: unconditional freedom. The energetic young outsider, who grew up trapped between social housing and foster families, leaves France and fights his way on the streets of Spain. Soon, poverty and loneliness take over, but Arnaud is a guy who bounces back. He resolutely follows his path, which leads him all the way to the Peruvian wilderness. Filmmaker Laure Portier paints an intimate portrait of her younger brother searching for his place in society.

 

 

 Terykony Boney Piles2

Terykony (Boney Piłes)

by Taras Tomenko (doc, Ukraine, 2022, 81'), Italian premiere

Nastya was six years old, when three missiles fired by the Russian army hit her house on New Year's Eve. She survived but lost her father, childhood and faith in life. For those like her, the war has become a daily reality, the landscape outside the window. Yet Nastya has dreams. Like every girl, she longs for a new house and a dog and keeps on writing letters to Santa asking him to bring her father back.

 

Turn Your Body to the Sun2 

Turn Your Body to the Sun

by Aliona van der Horst (doc, The Netherlands, 2021, 93'), Italian premiere

The incredible life story of a Tatar Soviet soldier who was captured by the Germans Nazis during World War II and sent to one of Stalin’s brutal camps where the love for an unknown girl becomes his salvation. Today, his daughter Sana traces the path of her silent father and tries to understand what made him the man she knew as a child, through his diaries and public archives. The filmmaker accompanies the daughter in her journey to find traces of those millions of Soviet soldiers left out of the narrative of the global war. She “re-appropriates” the archival footage through mixed techniques of double pass, zoom-in and colorization looking for the soul of the image. Softly but determinately, the film starts breaking sixty years of silence.

 

Ultraviolette2 

Ultraviolette et le gang des cracheuses de sang (Ultraviolette and the Blood-spitters Gang) 

by Robin Hunzinger (doc, France, 2021, 74'), Italian premiere 

After the death of his grandmother Emma, Robin and his mother Claudie find a collection of letters sent to Emma by a girl named Marcelle. Marcelle and Emma met and secretly loved each other in the 1920s during they adolescence, before their ways separated. From the sanatorium where she was hospitalized to treat tuberculosis, Marcelle wrote Emma letters that still burn with passion. At the sanatorium, rebellious Marcelle, nicknamed ‘Ultraviolette’, led a group of three young sick women. Through Marcelle’s suggestive letters, the film breaks down the barriers of time combining archive footages, avant-garde films, and music to create a sensuous, poetic atmosphere of absolute love, the profile of a courageous woman, ahead of her time. 

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