Article by Pietro Torchia
Translation by Alessia Licari
In this edition of the Turin Film Festival, characterized by a surreal, sci-fi and horror atmosphere and a need to escape reality, “Ex-Husbands” – presented out of competition – is a film that instead focuses on the real world.
Continua la lettura di “EX-HUSBANDS” BY NOAH PRITZKERArticle by Angela Borraccio
Translated by Fabio Castagno
The last important guest of the 41st edition of Torino Film Festival is the American director Oliver Stone, who will be awarded with Premio Stella della Mole. He will hold a masterclass and present his latest documentary Nuclear Now, which leads the audience to reflect about the contradictions and paradoxes of humankind in his typically blunt and direct style. The film takes its inspiration from the arguments of the book A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow by Joshua S. Goldstein, a leading expert on international relations, war and society, energy and climate change. The authors’ obvious intentions are to explain that nuclear energy can be a solution to climate change and the challenges putting a strain on human survival on the planet.
Continua la lettura di “NUCLEAR NOW” by OLIVER STONEArticle by Nicolò Pilon
Translation by Martina Agostino
During the elections in 2012 in Georgia, the Party’s candidate Mikheil Saak’ashvili of “United National Movement” promises free dental visits to all citizens over the age of 50. He does not limit himself to promises, in fact he hires teams of dentists tasked with restoring the smiles of his potential voters. At the end of the two-month campaign, however, Mikheil will lose the election, leaving citizens with half surgery done, but with no teeth. Eight years later, director Luka Beradze decides to go to one of the regions most affected by this electoral cataclysm, where he will find the Innominatovillage, in the municipality of Chiaturi.
Continua la lettura di “SMILING GEORGIA” BY LUKA BERADZEArticle by Francesco Ghio
Translation by Giorgia Legrottaglie
History is always written by the winners, by those who come first, those who wear the medal and have their faces portrayed on the front pages of newspapers. At the same time, the voice of the defeated fades and melts like snow under the rays of noon, so adept at melting those strong words. La Palisiada comes as a courageous attempt to restore the other face of truth, the one written by the losers, trampled by the news, annoying to those who wield power. The problem, however, remains the same: at some point, you have to deal with reality.
Continua la lettura di “LA PALISIADA” BY PHILIP SOTNYCHENKOArticle by Luca Giardino
Translation by Eleonora Torrisi
Rosa’s (Rosa Berder) last night before leaving for Montréal is an unforgettable party.
The girl must leave all her friends and move to Canada, perhaps to become a great dancer. But goodbyes are never easy and the night offers Rosa a chance to stop time to savor every sip of beer, every drag of a cigarette, and the warmth of the last day of summer. The meeting place is a large boulder in the middle of a beach, affectionately known as “the island”; here her friends set up a sort of farewell ritual, consisting of alcoholic challenges, seaweed battles and bathing in the sea. Rosa lives her last evening as if it were truly the last of her life without ever drowning in memories, but rather trying to recreate new ones that can last forever.
Article by Elisa Gnani
Translation by Francesca Borgheresi
A documentary about young people for young people, I 400 giorni: funamboli e maestri (“The 400 days: funambulists and masters”) shows the (first) 400 days in the professional life of twenty-four young actors and actresses from all around Italy. This documentary film shows how they share fears, expectations, interests and hopes, like young Antoine does – the protagonist of the famous film The 400 Blows by François Truffaut, who not by chance is commemorated here.
Continua la lettura di “I 400 giorni: funamboli e maestri” by Emanuele Napolitano and Emanuele SanaArticle by Carlotta Pegollo
Translation by Carolina Criscuolo
A woman stands beyond a net, armed with a rifle, peering into the empty pool below where a caged tiger, the pet of a gangster, lies.
This marks the beginning of Andrei Tănase’s film, developed as part of the TorinoFilmLab 2019 which globally premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023. The opening scene introduces the two main characters, their connection is evident through the first frames.
Leggi tutto: “TIGRU/DAY OF THE TIGER” by Andrei Tănase Continua la lettura di “TIGRU/DAY OF THE TIGER” by Andrei TănaseArticle by Antonio Congias
Translation by Martina Agostino
What’s left of Sofia (Sofia Tomic) are clothes, laid out as if they were laundry hanging in the sun. What’s left of Sofia is the carving of a heart on a tree, the sound of a thud in the water, and the echo of a dog barking in the face of an irreparable choice. Even Sofia’s tattoo drawings survive, failing to fulfil the uncomfortable situation she ended up herself in. Actually, Sofia’s past and the memory of her last wanderings, are sealed in Sofia Foi, the debut feature film by Brazilian director Pedro Geraldo.
«Can we stay like this for a while?» says Sofia, sure that she no longer has to fear her vulnerability, because she finally has a person in front of her who can understand her fragility. A fictitious safety that is swept away by an outbreak of yellow fever, which turns Sofia’s life into a long tunnel where absence and the rumbling of death dominate.
Continua la lettura di “SOFIA FOI” BY PEDRO GERALDOArticle by Pietro Torchia
Translation by Lara Martelozzo
Marinaleda by Louis Séguin, and Michel Vay by Nicolas Deschuyteneer and Patricia Gélise – two medium-length films presented at the Turin Film Festival in the Crazies section – address the road movie genre in opposite ways. In the former, the journey is a collective experience and becomes a pretext for enjoying the pleasure of sharing; in the latter, the journey is depicted as a metaphorical, intimate and private experience of the passage from an earthly dimension to a transcendent one. Marinaleda is a “political” road movie in which two vampires hitchhike from France to Spain to reach the town of Marinaleda, where a communist administration is in force. Amid new acquaintances, erotic moments and social discourses, it is the in-camera glances of the characters that capture the audience, inviting them to immerse in the vampire marxist-like philosophy of life according to which blood feasting becomes an altruistic gesture of body sharing – they are vampires of human and gentle nature with whom it is easy to empathize, in an atmosphere that reminds us of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Survive (2013), which also shares a fascination for slow narrative and a posed humour with Louis Séguin’s film.
Michel Vay tells of the introspective and transcendental escape journey of an outlaw who has just committed a robbery. A path to Michel’s death that moves between the concreteness of landscapes and the abstractness of the protagonist’s psychological torments, represented in the journey inside his mind through dance steps and music sounds. Attempting to narrate the passage between life and death, between the material and the immaterial in sixty minutes only, the film is at times overly ambitious, in a stylistic search for the perfect image that sometimes forgets the importance of audience involvement. A complacent nonlinear narrative that results in a didactic and predictable ending, with the concluding shot echoing the opening one, recalling a cyclical conception of life. A daring experimentation that is not perfectly successful and that not even the pleasant musical moments and Dantean quotations succeed to make truly exciting.
Article by Angela Borraccio
Translation by Rebecca Lorusso
The Spanish director Pablo Berger and the Arcadia Motion Pictures renew their collaboration to create their first 2D animated film. As with the previous Blancanieves (“Snow White”, 2012) – a black and white silent film – the director feels the need to reconnect with the essence of early 20th century cinema. For Robot Dreams he also looks back to the past, specifically to traditional animation, fascinated by its unlimited possibilities of storytelling and representation. Berger succeeds in tackling the challenge of the step-by-step technique – or, frame by frame – with ease, thanks to the habit of creating storyboards, which allowed him to integrate an ideal process for the development of animation.
Continua la lettura di “ROBOT DREAMS” BY PABLO BERGERArticle by Carlotta Pegollo
Translation by Francesca Borgheresi
A couple of actors decide to participate in the television program “Scheletri nell’armadio” (“Skeletons in the closet”), in which they have to tell their love story without any filter or secret. Lucia’s idea (Barbara Giordano) is to let the audience know about her using the catch of a national-popular show, which now seems to be the only way to achieve popularity besides social networks. Paolo (Alessio Vassallo), instead, is reluctant to the idea of showing his secrets, but he will be persuaded by the perspective of job. They swear to each other that they will only tell the truth on camera, even if, being actors, they can alter it a bit for the audience. A complete fiasco.
Leggi tutto: “Indagine su una storia d’amore” by Gianluca Maria TavarelliGianluca Maria Tavarelli, author and screenwriter of Indagine su una storia d’amore (“Analysis of a love story”), performs an autopsy on this relationship, which the spectator looks at with a voyeuristic taste. From the beginning of the film, in fact, we already know how the relationship of Paolo and Lucia will end, but we are captivated by a kind of morbid curiosity, on which the script and the staging pry. The facts that are shown and told will end up being wrong. Everything is uncertain and put under question in a way that leaves the audience unable to understand who is right. By doing this with a multi-layer and multi-sense narrative, Tavarelli constantly keeps the interest of the audience alive, so that they don’t have time to relax – or worse – to get bored. Thanks to this device, he doesn’t risk appearing trivial with an ordinary topic in this hyper-exposition era.
That which provides the attraction mechanism in the audience is to find how things really went, spying on the couple’s private reactions while on their own rediscovery. But since lies are always more intriguing than truth, Paolo becomes the real protagonist of this story. In fact, the audience knows a lot more about Paolo than Lucia does, a character that seems far too functional, if not just the litmus test of her partner’s behaviour. Alessio Vassallo manages to put on stage a good degree of measure even in the most desperate moments, such as when he attempts suicide. ( we give credits to Alessio Vassallo for some moves taken in the most desperate moments like attempted suicide) A quality that Paolo shares with the other characters too, also thanks to the irony with which Tavarelli colours the whole film, moving between an excessive exuberance and a comic lightness.
Article by Federico Lionetti
Translation by Martina Agostino
The young protagonist (Marc Zinga) and his pregnant girlfriend (Lucy Debay) fly from Belgium to Congo to reestablish their relationship with his family. However, he has to face the prejudice caused by a birthmark on his face – a bad omen, according to the local tradition, which has negatively affected his life since he was a child.
This is the very beginning of Augure, the opening film of the “Crazies” section of the 41st Turin Film Festival, and the first feature film by the eclectic artist Baloji, a Belgian graphic designer and musician from Congo. During the scenes of this family drama, the director tackles the spectacularity of the human bodies of a small local group, thereby depicting the colors and customs of a culture somewhere between actual African tradition and the director’s phantasmagorical inventiveness. A visual staging that crosses the boundaries of the mundane, taking us toward the magic of the fairy tale and the anxiety of the unconscious.
Continua la lettura di “AUGURE (OMEN)” BY BALOJIArticle by Romeo Gjokaj
Translation by Camilla Lippi
Lydia (Hafsia Herzi) and Salomé’s lives are intricately and specularly linked: if one of them is happy, the other one suffers and viceversa. Therefore, on the same day that Salomé celebrates her birthday and her newly discovered pregnancy, Lydia mourns the end of her relationship with her boyfriend, letting herself go to a lonely and alienated autumnal Paris that resembles Taxi Driver’s (1976) New York. However, when Salomé gives birth, Lydia runs into Milos (Alexis Manenti) – an insomniac bus driver that impersonates De Niro’s Travis Bickle and with whom Lydia previously had a fling – and realizes that the newborn represents a desperate attempt for her to finally feel loved.
Continua la lettura di “LE RAVISSEMENT” BY IRIS KALTENBACK
