Article by Carola Capello
Translated by Simona Sucato
“As a child, my parents taught me to say Inch’Allah (God willing) when I plan to do something. Here, Kufid is this: planning something unplanned. An oxymoron”. As Elia Moutamid states – Moroccan director, special mention as best new director at 2018 Nastri d’Argento –, whose first film Talien won in 2017 the Gran Premio della Giuria at Torino Film Festival.
Continua la lettura di “KUFID” BY ELIA MOUTAMIDArticle by Fabio Bertolotto
Translated by Nadia Tordera
Even before the images, there is a white light that suggests the coordinates for viewing the film. A light that invades the screen and appears as an eccentric substitute for black, on which the opening credits flow in reverse, from the top to the bottom, suggesting a backward path. This inverse motion is the spirit that moves Casa de antiguidades, the film of the Brazilian director João Paulo Miranda Maria that first looks at the past to talk about the present.
Continua la lettura di “CASA DE ANTIGUIDADES” BY JOÃO PAULO MIRANDA MARIAArticle by Luca Giardino
Translated by Valeria Collavini
“Go it alone”: that’s the title that young writer May Ryer (Bea Grant) chooses for her latest self-help handbook. Although her books don’t sell well and business is slow, May has far worse problems to deal with. A creepy, masked man breaks every night into the house where the writer lives with her husband, haunting her and pushing her to the edge. However, nobody seems to take this situation seriously – neither her condescending, insensitive husband nor the police, leaving May alone to her fate.
Continua la lettura di “LUCKY” BY NATASHA KERMANI – “REGRET” BY SANTIAGO MENGHINIArticle by Angelo Elia
Translated by Nadia Tordera
«Just for a moment, let’s dream together». This is the beginning of A Machine To Live In, directed by Yoni Goldstein and Meredith Zielke and shown at the Torino Film Festival “ TFFDOC/Paesaggio” section. The dream in which the film wants us to live is about Brasilia, the Brazilian capital built on a bare plain in a thousand days. Desired by the President Kubitschek, planned and designed by the architects Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, it was introduced as a utopia that has become reality at its inauguration in 1960. Brasilia is a shimmering example of modernist architecture: It is a city with many shapes, many triangles, lots of white, lots of mirrors and «completely shadowless». Probably this is the reason why the incidence of ultraviolet rays causes many cases of visual impairment. But if we want to live in a dream, we have to see less.
Continua la lettura di “A MACHINE TO LIVE IN” BY YONI GOLDSTEIN and MEREDITH ZIELKE
Article by Alessandro Pomati
Translated by Paola Macchiarella
“I long that far away place, where my loved ones come from”: these song lyrics open “Moving on”, first Yoon Dan-bi work, winner of four awards at the Busan International Short Film Festival. These lyrics seem to suggest a return to the roots for the director, back to her starting point.
And this is also what happens to the main characters of Yoon’s film, a brother and a sister who leave the house of their divorced father, a humble street vendor selling knockoff designer shoes. The children move to their grandfather’s, a suffering old man who is often hospitalized.
Continua la lettura di “MOVING ON” BY YOON DAN-BIArticle by Valentina Velardi
Translated by Aurora Sciarrone
Intimist and political at the same time, the director Brady’s debut film shows the transgenerational psychological impact of the Northern Irish conflict through the story of two sisters.
Filmed on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, it begins when Kelly (Nika McGuigan), missing after her mother’s death, suddenly comes back to the little town where she ran away from, bursting into her sister Lauren’s life (Nora-Jane Noone).
Continua la lettura di “WILDFIRE” BY CATHY BRADYArticle by Noemi Castelvetro
Translated by Simona Sucato
Renegotiating gender rules costs an overseas trip, the Mickey of the title, in a post-adolescence coming of age parable that establishes once and for all, the transition to adulthood. On the road is also the festive path of Mian Mian Lu’s debut feature film: from Taipei, to Vancouver and finally in competition for the 38th edition of Torino Film Festival.
Continua la lettura di “MICKEY ON THE ROAD” BY MIAN MIAN LUArticle by Carola Capello
Translated by Giulia Neirone
After Aquarela – cautionary film about water strength and beauty premiered in 2018 Venice Film Festival and included in the 2019 documentary nomination of the Academy Awards – Gunda is another simple, although not granted, food for thought by the Russian director Victor Kossakovsky. Set in a farm where we can only see a wooden house surrounded by nature, the main character is a group of animals in their everyday life.
Continua la lettura di “GUNDA” by VICTOR KOSSAKOVSKYArticle by Sirio Alessio Giuliani
Translated by Simona Sucato
Four years after The Monster, Bertino writes and directs a ghost story intertwined with the family drama, customizing it with its usual dry and explicit style. The movie was presented as a world premier at the Tribeca Film Festival 2020 and is out of competition in the section Le stanze di Rol at the 38th Torino Film Festival.
Continua la lettura di “THE DARK AND THE WICKED” By BRYAN BERTINOArticle by Arianna Vietina
Translated by Simona Assale
The Spanish tv series Antidisturbios represents those urban conflicts that we have witnessed in this 2020, from the riots of the Black Lives Matters movement, to the months of protest in Byelorussia, to the demonstrations in Poland. All of these were provoked by different reasons, but all defined by strong oppositions and incommunicability between protesters and law enforcements. A distance that remains impossible to fill, even if there seems to be no more air or space between these men and women, even if they merge one into another in agitated movements.
Continua la lettura di “ANTIDISTURBIOS” BY RODRIGO SOROGOYENAricle by Alice Ferro
Translated by Sofia Barbera
“Pino” is the title of the documentary made by Walter Fasano for the historical acquisition of one of the most significant works by Pino Pascali, by the Museum of contemporary art dedicated to the artist in Polignano a Mare, where he was born. A title that manages to convey the vibrating and overflowing soul of an artist who has deeply marked italian post-war art. This particular piece “Cinque bachi da setola e un bozzolo” (1968) finally returns “home” from Rome in 2018 in a story told through photographs that takes inspiration from “La Jetée” by Christ Marker.
Continua la lettura di “PINO” BY WALTER FASANOArticle by Niccolò Buttigliero
Translated by Giulia Neirone
Black screen, wind. Then, human voices together with neighs. In a dusty and austere racecourse, a horse race is interrupted at its acme, through a freeze-frame. Who is the winner, is not for us to know.
At this moment U slavu ljubavi (In Praise of Love) re-starts for the first time. Black screen again, nature sounds again: everything is covered by chirps and bellows. Now, humanity is not even considered on the sound level. From untouched nature to animals. Long static shots, mesmerized by horse bottoms. It seems that Drakulić’s point of view is not special, it is just one of the many possible perspectives. The world flows spontaneously, through every breath. Doesn’t matter if anthropomorphic subjects leave the screen. It is not about décadrages, or the subversion of some rules. It is rather about not identifying ourselves with a hierarchical organization of the audiovisual material. Everything is on the same level, and Drakulić succeeds in giving back the undecidability of one single point of view..
Continua la lettura di U SLAVU LJUBAVI (IN PRAISE OF LOVE), BY TAMARA DRAKULIĆArticle by Francesco Dubini
Translated by Carmen Tucci
A los migrantes, en sus viajes inciertos y llena de promesas, a las famillas de los desaparecidos.
This dedication closes the end credits of a movie that doesn’t end for real, but it continues to vibrate in the powerful echo of reality that tells. Immigrants, their uncertain journeys with a lot of promises, families of missing people : the movie is about these facts following Magdalena’s journey, a mother who’s looking for his son, who left for the United States in search of safety and disappeared for months. Born as a short film in 2012, the movie grows with its director with the bad situation that tells, about violence that tears mexican society apart and it opens a wound that doesn’t stop bleeding. Fernanda Valadez chooses to analyze that blood through the measure of intimacy : Sin señas particulares denounces the pain of a country through the pain of a mother.
Continua la lettura di “SIN SEÑAS PARTICULARES” BY FERNANDA VALADESArticle by Luca Giardino
Translated by Carmen Tucci
A slow overview opens onto the mountain landscape of Appalachia; in the distance a feeble explosion destabilizes for a few seconds the peace of that vision of paradise. Everything is quiet. This is how The Evening Hour starts, the new feature film produced by Braden King who, after nine years from Here (2011), comes back adapting for the big screen the Carter Sickel’s novel of the same name. In his new movie, King focuses on the realistic life of American suburb, discouraging the classical stylistic noir narrative elements and instilling a deep reflection about the fate of an entire generation: young people feel disillusioned about a non-existent future, forced to suffer the pressure of a world that doesn’t give escape apart from becoming addicted to drugs and violence.
Continua la lettura di “THE EVENING HOUR” BY BRADEN KINGArticle by Laura Anania
Translated by Francesca Cozzitorito
Pilar Palomero’s first feature film has two strong points: realism and ease. This combination characterises both the storyline and the overall style, making Las Niñas an emotional and nostalgic film. The protagonist is Celia, an eleven-year-old girl who lives with her young mother in Zaragoza in the early 90s. Her friendship with Brisa, the new girl in town, who rejects religion as a totalising concept, shows Celia a different understanding of reality.
Continua la lettura di “LAS NIÑAS” BY PILAR PALOMEROArticle by Valentina Velardi
Translated by Francesca Cozzitorto
Rudro (Titas Zia), a young artist in search of inspiration, decides to leave the chaotic life of Dhaka and embark on a journey to a remote mangrove island in the Bangal Delta. At first, he is welcomed by the local community, a small group of families who make their living fishing, but Rudro soon finds himself misunderstood and then ostracized by the villagers. Led by the Chairman (Fazlur Rahman Babu), imam and local leader, they first stare suspiciously and then with open disapproval at his installations and habits.
Continua la lettura di “THE SALT IN OUR WATERS” by REZWAN SHAHRIAR SUMITArticle by Sirio Alessio Giuliani
Translated by Simona Sucato
“The world goes on but you feel a little further behind”
Patrizia pronounces this sentence looking towards the camera. The sounds of the nearby street are the background to her words. The sun enlights her face and from her eyes transpires the typical melancholia of those who have suffered much, but also the hope of who doesn’t want to surrender. In this photo we can summarize the meaning of San Donato Beach, the new Fabio Donatini’s feature film, in competition at the 38° Torino Film Festival in the section TFFDOC/ Italiana.
Continua la lettura di “SAN DONATO BEACH” BY FABIO DONATINIArticle by Marco Ghironi
Translated by Aurora Sciarrone
The town of Mostar, its divers and a bridge really do split the generations of a community that is trying to forget and move on from war. Competing in the Italiana.doc’s section, Daniele Babbo makes his directorial debut with I Tuffatori – The Divers, quietly moving in the heart of Bosnia, along with the voices and memories of Igor, Denis, Miro, Edy and Goran. Faces and bodies that bewitch tourists with their leaps into the void, and at the same time hide the fear of an unknown future.
Article by: Alessandro Pomati
Translated by: Selene Novaro Mascarello
Ila, Ija: the names of the protagonists of two of director Kantemir Balagov’s films are separated only by one letter. Two women divided by fifty years of history and yet somehow connected: on the one hand, Ila, the protagonist of Tesnota, a young Jewish woman who acts like a tomboy and works as a mechanic; on the other hand, Ija, or Dylda (“beanpole”), as everyone calls her, a slender nurse who suffers from sudden epileptic seizures which completely isolate her from the real world. Two women whose lives are similarly marked by diversity, in spite of their living during two different periods of the history of Russia: for Ila, the start of the war between Russia and Chechnya; as for Ija, winter 1945 in Leningrad. On the one hand, the crumbling of the Soviet Union, on the other hand, its origins. And, at the two opposite ends of the spectrum, two women grappling with motherhood.
Continua la lettura di “DYLDA” BY KANTEMIR BALAGOVArticle by: Giacomo Bona
Translated by: Ilaria Roma
A white, white day is about a day which is as white as snow and Icelandic fog, as black as a film noir, and as red as blood. The death of Ingimundur’s wife is the trigger point for a series of events. Ingimundur (Ingvar Sigurdsson) is a cop who lives and works in a small village in Iceland, far away from everything and everyone. He hides his pain but at the same time he tries to manage and overcome it.
