Article by: Valentina Velardi Translated by: Alice De Vicariis
After Frastuono, presented at the TFF in 2014, Davide Maldi makes the second chapter of a trilogy on adolescence. The film, presented in the section TFFDOC/italiana, starts from a clear premise: the search for a context where teens are encouraged to learn a profession at an early age, and so grow up faster. For this reason, Maldi decided to follow the first school year of an hospitality institute class composed of five students.
Article by: Giulia Leo Translated by: Selene Novaro Mascarello
It’s 1989 and television is broadcasting footage of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena’s deaths. Federica (Jasmine Trinca) is spending Christmas with her family when she has her first epileptic seizure. A few years later she is a teenager, obsessed with the cult movie Simple Men (Hal Hartley, 1992) and with Elina Löwensohn’s character, who suffers from the same neurological disorder. Their fates are destined to intertwine when Federica, now an adult and a film director, meets the Rumanian actress in Rome. She offers her a part as herself in a biopic set in Bucharest; despite her initial reluctance, the actress accepts, hoping to regain some of her long-lost fame. Simple Women is Chiara Malta’s debut film; the director’s intent is made clear from the very beginning, with an intermixture of different registerswithin a meta-cinematic frame in which the lines between reality and fiction are blurred.
Francesco Dongiovanni’s documentary, I giorni e le opere, competes at TFF in the Italian.Doc section. It is about the meeting between two souls. Peppino is a quiet countryman who moves on the blurry line between the past and the present. Dongiovanni follows him paying attention not to trample on that fine line which divides the two dimensions, and that seems to survive only in Peppino. One of the most important features of the film is the breeder’s skillful work, but the director’s touch is also remarkable: the silent long shots – even when they are empty – are characterized by the swinging of the hand-held camera. Thanks to this technique, horizons imperceptibly bend and dissolve, and the loneliness of the different locations appear even more meaningful.
Hawaii is a beautiful and dramatic microcosm: the economy of the island is based on millionaire incomes that come from tourism. But inland, far from beaches the villages for vacationers, indigenous people face their dependencies on the “resources”, while the islanders fight battles for the survival of all of us.
Mario Soldati was an all-round author, a cultured man who has dedicated himself to literature, cinema, television and journalism. He has been the writer and the director of his own life. Born in Turin in 1906, he died in 1999 and, on the twentieth anniversary of his death, we’re talking about him again. Who was Mario Soldati? Why do we keep talking about him? Do we keep on making the same mistake of underestimating him?
Article by: Gianluca Tana Translated by: Anna Benedetto
After winning best Italian documentary for Diorama at the 35th edition of the Torino Film Festival, Demetrio Giacomelli is back in competition at Turin with his new film L’uomo raccoglitore (The gatherer man).
Wet Season is the second work by Anthony Chen, a Malaysian director who already won the Camera d’Or in Cannes in 2012 with Ilo Ilo. It is the monsoon season in Malaysia, and rains don’t want to stop. There are bodies of water that reflect and amplify the state of mind of the characters who populate this film.
Calogero (Vincenzo Nemolato) is a young Sicilian man who wanted to do the right thing for himself, for her companion and for his still unborn daughter Marcella. This is the reason why Calogero denounced the killer that had once shot two men right in front of his granita cart. And this is the reason why he ended up in Trentino, in a tiny forgotten village, living in a guesthouse called Paradise.
Article by: Cristina Danini Translated by: Ilaria Roma
The Alpenrose is the typical Styrian guesthouse where you can taste local food and beer in a traditional atmosphere. The waitress, who is also the owner of the place, is not satisfied with her life even though her husband, a Styrian cook, tries to give her some comfort while tenderizing some meat by using his bare hands. He is also watched by a stuffed groundhog which is obviuosly Styrian as well.
«I have been living in Czech Republic for some time. I have been discovering its culture little by little and, above all, its great cinematographic history. For this reason, I decided to make a movie which was a tribute to the sixties Czech cinema.» that is how the Chilean director introduced the first screening of his film at Torino Film Festival.
Article by: Noemi Castelvetro Translated by: Francesca Massa
Jill (Jocelyn DeBoer) and Lisa (Dawn Luebbe), hectic mothers, trophy wives and frenemies, live in a small, thoroughly organized residential district, with disgusting pastel colors, where people go around with golf carts. Jill is a people pleaser, and she decides to give her newborn to Lisa, whom accepts: the people around the two women smoothly approve this exchange, and surreal events full of symbolic elements increase.
Film critics in Cannes have branded it as a childish play, a bundle of tangles or a formal experiment which has failed the expectations. On the other hand, the crowd of the enthusiasts present at the display is quiet and has praised it as much as its detractors have booed it. The new movie made by the Romanian director is actually a bundle of tangles: a postmodern but not a pimped one.
Article by: Silvia Gentile Translated by: Lucrezia Villa
After his debut as a director with Finchè c’è prosecco c’è Speranza (2017), Antonio Padovan presents his second film, which is an atypical combination along the lines of Spielberg’s science-fiction films and Italian comedies, not to mention the great influence of director Carlo Mazzacurati, with whom Padovan shares roots.
Article by: Ottavia Isaia Translated by: Francesca Massa
Made in Bangladesh, just like the labels we find on our clothes: from the first frames, the film focuses on the harsh working conditions under which the women who produce them are subjected, in overcrowded rooms and without security measures. The leading character Shimu (Rikita Nandini Shimu), after the death of a colleague in a factory fire, fights against these conditions and begins to collaborate with a journalist to start a union that protects women workers (all women, because they are considered more easily manageable and they are paid less than men).
Whatever foreruns the future, so innovations and changes, is often perceived as a choc from those who live in the present, since they’re still busy figuring out the past. From this point of view, Le choc du futur is emblematic, considering that the main issue concerns the creative process of a new kind of music: the music of the future.
Article by: Giulia Leo Translated by: Francesca Massa
A confident illustration about knowing how to laugh. Laugh about the pain and turn it into something else: this is what Leticia Jorge does in her second work Alelí. The Mazzotti family is warm, enchanting, insane; the father’s death is the backstory of the odd and absurd misfortunes that occur in a day. A family black comedy that follows a classic pattern: as a member of the family passes away, the relatives attempt to deal with the emotional and material heritage which the departed left behind.
Article by: Giacomo Bona Translated by: Ilaria Roma
When you lose someone you care about, you feel lonely and the only person who can understand your pain is you. Besides the drama of losing her best friend Grace (Christina Masterson), Aubrey (Virginia Gardner) feels bad for not being there for her when she needed her the most. That is why, after her friend’s funeral, she decides to break into Grace’s apartment and spend the night there. The next morning, she wakes up and finds out that the entire town is strangely silent and empty. There are some abandoned suitcases, scrap metal and blood on the snowy streets.
Article by: Valentina Velardi Translated by: Lucrezia Villa
Noura (Hend Sabri) dreams of finalizing the divorce proceedings as soon as possible to be able to live with her lover Lassaad (Hakim Boumsaoudi) at last. Her life has not been easy so far; her husband is in jail and she has had to raise her three kids alone while trying to keep a roof over their heads by working in a hospital’s laundry room. Nevertheless, she is happy, she has managed to emancipate and find her own balance. However, when Jemal (Lotfi Abdelli) is unexpectedly released from jail, he comes back abruptly in her life, upsetting her balance.
Article by: Elio Sacchi Translated by: Ilaria Roma
There is a double bond between Taika Waititi and the city of Turin. After the mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows, where the director explored the daily life of a group of vampires, Waititi comes back in town to open the 37thedition of the “Torino Film Festival” with Jojo Rabbit. The movie, focused on one of the most tragic episodes in the history of mankind – the fall of the Third Reich – , is characterized by irony and lighthearted tones. The filmmaker started working on this movie during the post-production of What We Do In The Shadows, but he had to wait for the right time to release it.
After King of the Belgians (2016), King Nicholas III (played by Peter Van den Begin) is back with an unconventional sequel directed by Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens, The Barefoot Emperor, which depicts the crisis of identity in Europe and satirizes the major powers. The sovereign, who had crossed Europe in order to go back to Belgium, split by a coup d’état carried out by the Walloons, now has to face a new surreal threat: the disbandment of the European Parliament and the crowning of an emperor of Nova Europa.
