Article by Valentina Velardi
Translated by Lorenzo Papa
Evanescent and at the same time material, the expressive universe that animator Florence Miailhe gives form to with La traversée succeeds in combining a fairy-tale atmosphere with crude realism, restoring with extreme clarity the strength of a universal and archetypal story, that of those who are forced to abandon their own land and, as exiles, struggle to get somewhere else.
Continua la lettura di “LA TRAVERSÉE” BY FLORENCE MIAILHEArticle by Laura Anania
Translated by Gianluca Zogno
Micaela Gonzalo joins TFF39 with her first full-length film, which follows a young Argentinian girl called Jimena (Mora Arenillas) along her journey towards self-awareness and personal growth.
Her path is marked by the dualities between solitude and companionship, between individual and universal and between family and work. The protagonist must solve these issues in order to find her own place in the world.
Continua la lettura di “LA CHICA NUEVA” BY MICAELA GONZALOArticle by Gaia Verrone
Translated by Stefania Frassetto
The opening film of the 39th edition of the Turin Film Festival is Sing 2, written and directed by Gareth Jennings, in its international preview. In this new chapter, Buster Moon and his friends set out on a journey that takes them from the small reality of the Moon Theatre to the sparkling Redshore City, where they look for a new adventure and a new opportunity to prove their worth to the world, by getting the chance to perform at the Crystal Tower Theatre. Although, at first, they achieve what they wished for, thanks to the unhoped-for help of fate, soon they are crushed by hardships hiding behind every corner. And to make the situation even more complicated, there is the “white” lie told by Moon to appear more impressive to the eyes of the tycoon producer of the show: this lie will lead him to risk much more than just the realization of his goals, forcing him to face the reality of a competitive and, at times, cruel industry.
Continua la lettura di “SING 2”, BY GARETH JENNINGSArticle by Chiara Rosaia
Translated by Simona Sucato
Slow panoramic scour a sidereal landscape, an expanse of mountains covered by snow and dominated by the wind. It is perhaps an alien territory that is at the center of El elemento enigmático, a hostile environment in which three men struggle to advance. Men in helmets and motorcycle suits, without face or voice (we under stand the dialogues only through subtitles), wandering aimlessly waiting for their own end. An atmosphere of suspension persist throughout the movie, a work difficult to categorize, halfway between storytelling and video art. Indeed, if it is possible to trace aspects dear to science fiction,such as the clash between nature and man, these are sucked into the omnipresent aura of mystery, a dense and at the same time impalpabile atmosphere, like the icy vapors emanating here from the rocks.
Article by Andrea Bruno
Translated by Aurora Sciarrone
A bar, a few lights on: some dim colored neon-lights, the counter’s illumination, an old jukebox emitting a soft glare in a corner. Paul (Peter Outerbridge), the bartender, is about to close the place while outside in the night,a snowstormblows.All of a sudden Steve (RJ Mitte) bursts in,a wanderercarrying a story from a different bar, of a different bartender, of a different stranger brought there by the storm. From this first one, a lot more stories come up, while midnight approachesand someoneis relentlessly driving in the snow.
Continua la lettura di “THE OAK ROOM” by CODY CALAHANArticle by Niccolò Buttigliero
Translated by Nadia Tordera
Red Aninsri opens with a dialogue between cats. They communicate through the most artificial of cinematographic techniques that allow them to speak: dubbing. No attempt to follow the expressions of their faces or their movements. The human voice adheres to their bodies forcibly asserting its technological superiority. That of Red Aninsri is a universe in which everything is exquisitely fake, where an incurable discrepancy remains between the images of the world and their sounds.
Continua la lettura di “RED ANINSRI OR TIPTOEING ON THE STILL TREMBLING BERLIN WALL” by RATCHAPOOM BOONBUNCHACHOKE and “MOM, I BEFRIENDED GHOSTS” by SASHA VORONOVArticle by Chiara Rosaia
Translated by Nadia Tordera
Among the films of this edition of the Torino Film Festival, Une dernière fois represents an anomalous object. Indeed, on closer inspection it does not often happen that a film defined as pornographic crosses the boundaries of sector events which although increasing still constitute a separate universe, well distinguished from generalist festivals. Let’s put aside the misunderstandings (and for some the hopes): Olympe de G.’s first feature film is not just sex, just as its purpose is not (only) to excite us. It is not because the sixty-nine healthy and wealthy protagonist Salomé (Brigitte Lahaie) has decided to die. And it is from this serene but irrevocable choice that sexual interactions are born, the succession of embraces in search of the right person with whom to live her “last time”.
Article by Alice Ferro
Translated by Paola Macchiarella
February 6th, 1978 – On a sidewalk in Washington D.C., a body was found. It was Linda Lipnack Kuehl, a journalist who devoted the last ten years of her life to writing a (never finished) biography of the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday. During her research, she interviewed dozens of people and investigated thoroughly on the singer’s life. The heritage she left is priceless: 125 audiotapes, 200 hours of interviews and a manuscript. Billie is the result of the analysis and punctual use of this unpublished material: a colossal project directed by James Erskine, who decided to create a documentary about the singer and then found himself in charge of a rare task, beginning with the purchase of this precious material from a collector in New Jersey.
Continua la lettura di “BILLIE” BY JAMES ERSKINEArticle by Fabio Bertolotto
Translated by Simona Sucato
Funny Face opens with the close-up of Saul (Cosmo Jarvis), an introverted boy from Coney Island, looking into the camera wearing a grotesque grinning mask. Like The Joker, even the protagonist of Tim Sutton’s new film is an outcast who craves revenge for wrongs suffered. The mask thus establishes a direct dialogue with pop iconology which, starting with Todd Phillips’ latest film (Joker, 2019), has made that smile a symbol of oppression.
Continua la lettura di “FUNNY FACE” BY TIM SUTTONArticle by Francesco Dubini
Translated by Nadia Tordera
Eighteen years after the last edition, the competitive section of short films returns to the Torino Film Festival. Two programs, twelve shorts chosen from more than 500 titles for six female directors and six male directors from all over the world. Very different talents compared to a heterogeneous parterre that combines a fascinating and precious variety of techniques and ideas. It is proof of the importance and strength of a complex and demanding genre capable of “giving back the cinematographic machine in a small way” at an international level, according to the recruiter Daniele De Cicco
Continua la lettura di TORINO 38 SHORTSArticle by Alessandro Pomati
Translated by Valeria Collavini
Madagascar, third millennium. In a jam-packed prison whose inmates have to spend their hour of air in an incredibly lousy court, there is a prison guard who is tormented by the memory of her homicidal father, who was never captured nor prosecuted for his crimes. When one of the inmates claims that he met her father, the guard’s obsession becomes even more urgent.
Continua la lettura di “ZAHO ZAY” BY MAÉVA RANAÏVOJAONA AND GEORG TILLERArticle by Niccolò Buttigliero
Translated by Nadia Tordera
«Every noble, grandiose and impeccable instant is formed, filled, crumbled and recreated in a new instant that is created, formed, consumed, crumbled and redone in a new instant that is created, formed, filled, bent and connected to the next that announces itself, that is created, formed, filled and exhausted in the next that is born, that arises and succumbs and into the next that comes it arises, restores, matures and joins itself to the next that is formed… This continues without ending and stopping, without fatigue and accidents, with an immeasurable and monumental perfection» -Henri Michaux
«I wanted to do a show with a language I invented to bring people together for just one night. […] They insisted that I do it again but I didn’t want to». The theater of Jorge Bonino (1935-1990) is pure to the extent that every one of his works, words or actions is presence, an act inextricably linked to the moment in which it is expressed.
Continua la lettura di “UN CUERPO ESTALLÓ EN MIL PEDAZOS”, BY MARTIN SAPPIAArticle by Cristina Danini
Translated by Nadia Tordera
To die is not difficult. Difficult is the life of those who remain, after death has passed in front of them; and Mario learned this in the hard way..
Mario (the very young Thomas Prenn) is young and handsome and he loves to dance. But Mario is not Lenz (Noah Saavedra), the young promise of the country, even more beautiful and talented than him. Mario survived so he will be asked to the bitter end why he is not the one who died in place of Lenz, victim of an attack in Rome.
Continua la lettura di “HOCHWALD” BY EVI ROMENArticle by Luca Giardino
Translated by Paola Macchiarella
« There’s nothing mystic [in my cinema], please, try to understand. It is only about remembrance, preserving other people’s memory and knowing what to do with the past. »..
These words reveal the unpretentiousness of a great artist who has a clear aim: to use images to sculpt an irreversibly transformed world. The camera is the most suitable instrument for analysing the life of a country which is slowly forgetting about its recent past and starting to rediscover the joy of ancient times: an archaic love for life which regains its space on the movie film. Marcel Khutsiev, main director of the “new wave” developed in the Soviet Union following Stalin’s death, revives in the Back To Life section of the Torino Film Festival with his 1967 feature film Iyulskiy dozhd (July Rain).
Continua la lettura di JULY RAIN” BY MARLEN KHUTSIEV – “A GEORGIAN TOAST” BY GIULIANO FRATINIArticle by Sirio Alessio Giuliani
Translated by Simona Sucato
During the winter of 1974, Werner Herzog travelled on foot from Munich to Paris to save his friend and mentor’s life, the film critic Lotte Eisner, who is critically ill. A symbolic act of love that the director told in the book Of Walking on Ice(Sentieri nel ghiaccio). In this documentary, presented out of competition in the section TFF Doc Paesaggio of 38° Torino Film Festival, Pablo Maqueda takes its cue from Herzog’s writing and retraces its steps in a journey halfway between the travelogue and the bildungsroman, which becomes an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of making cinema today.
Continua la lettura di “DEAR WERNER (WALKING ON CINEMA)” BY PABLO MAQUEDAArticle by Arianna Vietina
Translated by Sofia Barbera
A line, a cut, a shot. These are the means used by director Philip Rizk for his ambitious project to tell the long and complex history of colonialism and its consequences that keep tormenting the most fragile territories, which now lack sustenance and are left in chaos. A fate they share with America which was conquered by cowboys, and Syria nowadays.
Article by Giacomo Bona
Translated by Nadia Tordera
In a former sugar factory that has been converted into laboratories for experimenting therapies capable of stopping aging, Dr. Ruben (Signe Egholm Olsen) conducts her experiments, financially supported by Thomas (Anders Heinrichsen). The theories of the doctor, specifically a veterinarian, allow her to soon find an effective cure only for men. However, therapy for women is not so immediate and requires additional research, which is performed on human guinea pigs – including Mia (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen), Thomas’s wife – who are kidnapped by Ruben’s two male assistants, the Dog and the Pig.
Continua la lettura di “BREEDER” BY JENS DAHLArticle by Roberto Guida
Translated by Paola Macchiarella
In the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, at an altitude of about three hundred meters, there is Talcum, a small, independent village. Brian Ritchie and his family have been living for decades here, where there used to be mines. They have seen the development of economic decline, environmental decay and social violence. Local people are called hillbillies, which means yokels, rednecks, a name that has become their identity. Among them, there’s Brian himself, who lives trapped between a mythical past and a future with no perspectives. He is one of the last witnesses of an endangered world, which serves as the inspiration for this poetry.
Continua la lettura di “THE LAST HILLBILLY” BY DIANE SARA BOUZGARROU AND THOMAS JENKOEArticle by Andrea Bruno
Translated by Nadia Tordera
Divided into two separate programs of about one hour each, there are eight films that make up the competitive ITALIANA.CORTI section of the 38th Torino Film Festival. The variety of gazes is remarkable but perhaps there is a common thread that unites them and that must be sought in the attention that almost all directors turn to intimate and everyday stories, often able to rise, sometimes unexpectedly, towards the territories of epic. Above all they share a lively linguistic research which usually uses archival material, found footage, Super 8, or collage in the almost desperate experimentation of new expressive solutions.
Continua la lettura di ITALIANA.CORTIArticle by Carola Capello
Translated by Paola Macchiarella
First work of the director Eugen Jebeleanu, Camp de Maci is inspired by a real event happened in 2013 in Bucarest, when a group of homophobic demonstrators interrupted some LGBTQ+ film screenings.
Continua la lettura di “CAMP DE MACI” by EUGEN JEBELEANU
