Archivi categoria: English version

English version, TFF 39 - 2021, Torino Film Festival

“ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE” BY THEO ANTHONY

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Article by Cristian Cerutti

Translated by Francesca Luna Lombardo

One eye turns to the camera. The camera enters to examine the optic nerve from which the connections to the brain branch off, while the cold, unaffected voice-over explains how it is responsible for reconstructing the data received. However, the reconstruction is never impartial. It’s always influenced by the cultural structures in which we are immersed. The opening sequence of All Light, Everywhere immediately reveals the intention behind the visual essay directed by Theo Anthony: to overturn the dialectic between observer and observed. At the same time it demonstrates how, historically, it has been concealed by observers to hide the connection between dialectics and the management of power.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“EL ELEMENTO ENIGMÁTICO” by ALEJANDRO FADEL, “THE PHILOSOPHY OF HORROR – A SYMPHONY OF FILM THEORY” by PÉTER LICHTER and BORI MÁTÉ

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Article 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.

Continua la lettura di “EL ELEMENTO ENIGMÁTICO” by ALEJANDRO FADEL, “THE PHILOSOPHY OF HORROR – A SYMPHONY OF FILM THEORY” by PÉTER LICHTER and BORI MÁTÉ →

English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“THE OAK ROOM” by CODY CALAHAN

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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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“RED ANINSRI OR TIPTOEING ON THE STILL TREMBLING BERLIN WALL” by RATCHAPOOM BOONBUNCHACHOKE and “MOM, I BEFRIENDED GHOSTS” by SASHA VORONOV

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“UNE DERNIÈRE FOIS” BY OLYMPE DE G.

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Article 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”.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“BILLIE” BY JAMES ERSKINE

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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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“FUNNY FACE” BY TIM SUTTON

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival, Universal

TORINO 38 SHORTS

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Article 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

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“ZAHO ZAY” BY MAÉVA RANAÏVOJAONA AND GEORG TILLER

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“DA LONTANO, PIÙ FORTE” BY ANNAMARIA MACRIPÒ

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Article by Alice Ferro

Translated by Paola Macchiarella

“What is the cost of evoking pain, considering that it cannot be erased?”. If it is true that a photograph can stop a moment in time, Da lontano, più forte is a journey dotted with instants, memories and words, which revolutionizes the theme of coping with grief, giving it a new, more complete meaning. The director Annamaria Macripò leads us in a personal and intimate dimension, to discover a twenty-year-long diary (from 1998 to 2018), full of images and thoughts related to her mother’s illness and loss. It is all about welcoming pain -the keyword of the journey-, a full and deep acceptance of it as our own.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“UN CUERPO ESTALLÓ EN MIL PEDAZOS”, BY MARTIN SAPPIA

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report, Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“HOCHWALD” BY EVI ROMEN

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

JULY RAIN” BY MARLEN KHUTSIEV – “A GEORGIAN TOAST” BY GIULIANO FRATINI

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Article 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).

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“DEAR WERNER (WALKING ON CINEMA)” BY PABLO MAQUEDA

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“MAPPING LESSONS” BY PHILIP RIZK

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“BREEDER” BY JENS DAHL

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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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020

“THE LAST HILLBILLY” BY DIANE SARA BOUZGARROU AND THOMAS JENKOE

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

ITALIANA.CORTI

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“CAMP DE MACI” by EUGEN JEBELEANU

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Article 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.

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English version, Film, Film (English), Report (English), TFF 38 - 2020, Torino Film Festival

“CLEANERS” By GLENN BARIT

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Article by Fabio Bertolotto

Translated by Nadia Tordera

The “cleaners” to which the title refers are a group of eight students from a strict Catholic school in the Philippines. They are defined in this way because they are the protagonists of four stories in which they are forced to respect obtuse educational rules that require them to be clean and correct at all costs. Cleaners also describes the pressures that young people experience from a world that is dirty and superficial.

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