Article by Michelangelo Morello
Translated by Benedetta Di Fiore and Rebeca Tirgovetu
The first work by Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy was presented in competition at the 39th edition of Torino Film Festival. The film is a vehement criticism of the male domination of Egyptian society which leads to a dark comedy with gloomy humour, acquiring increasingly absurd tones.
Continua la lettura di “FEATHERS” BY OMAR EL ZOHAIRYArticle by Marco Ghironi
Translated by Francesca Schiavello
June 7th, 1919: the small nation of Malta refuses to be dominated again by the British Empire, reaffirming the desire for independence. And among the city’s ravines, the roofs of the houses and the squares of the island off the coast of Sicily, blood begins to flow when the British commence firing and begin to impose their law.
Continua la lettura di “BLOOD ON THE CROWN” BY DAVIDE FERRARIOArticle by Valentina Velardi
Translated by Mattia Prelle
Jina (Geong Seung-yeon), an exemplary employee in a credit card company’s call centre, is a bashful and reserved girl, strictly attached to her habits and to the peaceful succession of places and acts that mark her days, which she divides between her little apartment and the workplace.
Continua la lettura di “ALONERS” BY HONG SEONG-EUNArticle by Annaisa Quarto
Translated by Francesca Luna Lombardo
Premiered in the Encounters section of the last Berlinale, where it won the Special Jury Prize, Taste, the first feature film by Vietnamese director Lê Bao arrives at TFF39 in the Out-of-Competition/TFLAB section.
Continua la lettura di “TASTE” BY LÊ BAOArticle by Giulia Seccia
Translated by Lorenzo Papa
“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
Samuel Beckett
In Potenza, during the night of the winter solstice – the longest night of the year – a woman is dissatisfied with her job, three boys are trying to escape adulthood, a corrupt politician is attempting to achieve some sort of salvation, and the heart of a young boy gets broken. These are the stories that Simone Aleandri’s film, out of competition at the Turin Film Festival, weaves together; stories of characters in crisis, unstable, different stories that converge, however, in the same place: a gas station, the place where the film begins.
Article by Anna Quarto
Translated by Francesca Schiavello
Multidisciplinary artist Amalia Ulman debuted in competition at TTF 39 with her first feature film “El planeta”, already presented at the 2021 Sundance Festival. The micro-budget and a small crew of five make this debut an experiment that evokes the independent American cinema of the 1990s.
Continua la lettura di “EL PLANETA” BY AMALIA ULMANArticle by Niccolò Buttigliero
Translated by Mattia Prelle
A 64 minutes and 1.700 kilometers long train trip that swings between light and darkness, plumbing a metaphysical Vietnam. It moves through the 17th parallel – the most bombed place in the world – and the Ruc settlement, a population who fans the holy fire whose extinction would cause the extinction of the world too.
Continua la lettura di “LUZ VIAJE OSCURO” BY TIN DIRDAMAL, EVA CADENAArticle by Sara Longo
Translated by Stefania Frassetto
It may seem like cinema does not live off-screen. It appears like a chimera that exists only when you are looking at it; but that is not true: behind every film there is an organic and heterogeneous group of people working non-stop to bring back the magic, finally, to the theatres. Through the three Masterclasses dedicated to the figure of the actor in the setting of the Turin Film Festival, it was possible to create an interesting confluence of acting and the figures that gravitate around it, offering an in-depth analysis on the several field jobs that support the performers throughout their growth.
Continua la lettura di BETWEEN PERFORMERS AND SCREEN: TFF’S MASTERCLASSES DEDICATED TO THE ACTORArticle by Alice Ferro
Translated by Giulia Baldo
“Somos malas, podemos ser peores” We are evil, we can be even more evil.
The notes of a trumpet in the silence of a recording room seem to foretell the roar of an earthquake. This is how Dora Garcia’s documentary opens, almost concealing – albeit temporarily – the disruptive force of what it will be its main subject. Music is, indeed, the seed of this work, whose title is the Spanish translation of “Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte”, a song by the German composer Friedrich Holländer… if I could desire something. The delicate recording sessions alternate with the intense images of the feminist movement’s fights, which have overwhelmed Mexico City for five years. The disappointment and the unheard suffering of women have been going on for so long that the sadness, the vulnerability derived from abandonment have transformed in shield and sword at the same time. This is what the song communicates, echoing for the entire duration of the film.
Mexico, torn apart by femicides and continuous disappearings, is the centre of a global plague, of a social emergency which has to be narrated as the product of a centuries-old culture and not as the result of few, isolated cases. “Every minute of every week they kidnap our friends, they kill our sisters” sing the women of Mexico City, showing their green handkerchiefs in support of legal abortion or the colourful signs which symbolize, one by one, the rights they claim. The march is irrepressible, it permeates the city and then resolves itself into destruction: the only weapon these women have left in order to be heard. It is through union that the individual vulnerabilities interweave in a defence network which allows women and little girls to reclaim the street, a place so ordinary, and yet almost prohibited to the one who walks alone. And it is precisely to those lonely women that the chants are addressed: “You are not alone”, “If they touch one, we will all answer”, “Yes, I believe you”.
Continua la lettura di “SI PUDIERA DESEAR” ALGO BY DORA GARCIAArticle by Cristian Cerutti
Translated by Gianluca Zogno
An Abbreviated Manual to Free Cinema from Reality – Avi Mograbi’s Documentarist Forays, the title of Israeli director’s masterclass, is fairly self-explanatory. It closely mirrors the title of his film, The First 54 Years – An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation, which has been presented in the TFFDoc / non-competing section, and it mirrors its approach as well.
In both cases the director starts from specific images – the full-length features Z32 (2008) and The First 54 Years in the case of the masterclass and the archive of interviews belonging to the Breaking the Silence association in the case of the film – to be able to push for deeper thoughts in the respective fields, in this case military strategy and documentary films.
Thanks to this empiric process The First 54 Years allows the director to create a manual on military occupation techniques through the observation of multiple testimonies.
In very much the same way the director has used his two films as indisputable examples during the masterclass to show off the various possibilities of reality cinema. Although the two documentaries are based on the same source material, they go in different directions leading to two very different results. Z32 is entirely based on a war veteran’s ponderings about the actions he has committed throughout his military service. The First 54 Years, on the other hand, refuses any possibility of elaborating trauma, focusing instead on witnesses’ tales which expose facts and mechanisms regarding the Israeli occupation. As previously mentioned, the source material for both documentaries is made up of soldiers’ testimonies which have been collected by Breaking the Silence, an association founded by Mograbi himself with the aim of telling the story and the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and to keep alive those memories which governments from 1967 onwards have attempted to erase.
Z32 was created with the idea of making a fairly straightforward film telling the story of a soldier who regrets having taken part in a retaliatory action against Palestinian policemen. The possibility of making a movie centered around the emotions and thoughts of the soldier is hampered by the fact that the man does not want his face to be shown. This was solved thanks to the director’s intuition to cover the soldier’s face with a 3D digital mask which still left his eyes and mouth visible, thus enabling him to show his emotions. This solution notwithstanding, the veteran still found it hard to express himself freely. Mograbi then decided to give the soldier a camera, to allow him to autonomously reflect upon his actions. At this time the man’s girlfriend becomes a relevant figure, given that she takes part in the soldier’s ponderings and opposing his attempts to absolve himself. At the same time, the director is questioning the moral dilemmas surrounding his film: is it fair to hide a murderer inside one’s work? It is fair to exploit his story? These thoughts are told by the director via songs, almost as if the musical were a mask used to filter his reflections, similarly to what happens to the protagonist.
The First 54 Years moves in a different direction. In this case Mograbi uses a number of testimonies from Breaking the Silence’s archives, in order to make a film made up of a series of interviews. Mograbi focuses here on tales of actions, procedures, orders and mechanisms of Israeli military operations in Palestina, leading the viewer like a military tactics expert. The director, like a modern Machiavelli, recites passages of an imaginary military occupation manual which uses the Israeli case – from the 1967 West Bank occupation to the first and second Intifadas – as an examples to prove its points. These are harsh words which contrast strongly with Mograbi as a person, in a powerful attack towards the Israeli state confirming, once again, the director’s ability to question reality, internalize it and decline it in different ways – ironically, cinically, experimentally – which are always functional to a critical analysis of the world.
Article by Valentina Velardi
Translated by Giulia Baldo
«I have the impression that the more massive our communication is, and the more we consume points of view and opinions, the more superficial that communication gets». This is how Ronny Trocker comments on the subject of his film which, by observing the reactions of the different members of what seems to be the perfect German family – educated, wealthy and bilingual – following a little break-in at their beach house, examines human relationships and the dynamics, often disfunctional, underlying them.
Continua la lettura di “DER MENSCHLICHE FAKTOR” BY RONNY TROCKERArticle by Gaia Verrone
Translated by Benedetta Di Fiore
Inspired by true events narrated in the homonymous novel by Enrico Costa of 1884, Il muto di Gallura is the only Italian feature film in competition at TFF 39. In mid-nineteenth-century Sardinia, a feud broke out between two Gallura families, triggering a conflict that lasts for several years, through a chain of reciprocal wrongs. In the name of the ancient and sacred law of retaliation, 70 people are killed, many by the hand of a deaf-mute boy, Bastiano Tarsu.
Continua la lettura di “IL MUTO DI GALLURA” BY MATTEO FRESIArticle by Laura Anania
Translated by Stefania Frassetto
On his cinematographic debut, Qi Rui proposes in the Contest section Torino 39 the touching story of Zhang Jixiang (Li Yingchun), a twelve-year-old girl running from an oppressive and suffocating world. The main character lives in an extremely poor little town in the Chinese mountains, when, one day, she becomes her classmates’ target as she is falsely accused of stealing.
Continua la lettura di “THE DAY IS OVER” BY QI RUIArticle by Davide Gravina
Translated by Eléna Bellino
“If I survive, I’ll kill you all”. Bull (Neil Maskell), addressing his enemies, who were once his family, utters these words which would belong in the banal prologue to a classic revenge movie. The British director, however, astonishes the audience of Torino Film Festival ’39 and presents an extraordinary work which finds its essence not in the unexpected and desperate need for revenge but in a ruthless search for salvation.
Continua la lettura di “BULL” BY PAUL ANDREW WILLIAMSArticle by Enrico Nicolosi
Translated by Elena Soldà
Thanks to the perfect restoration of the “Cinematography Sperimental Center”, particularly careful to the sound tracks editing (very important for the point of the movie), and the presentation in the “Back to Life” section of TFF39, the Turin audience was able to see, most likely for the first time, “Number One” by Gianni Buffardi (1973). The movie is pervaded by a conscious madness and clarity of purpose, often unknown to the “crime-genre movies”, which in that period filled Italian theatres
Continua la lettura di “NUMBER ONE” BY GIANNI BUFFARDIArticle by Marco Ghironi
Translated by Alexandra Oancea
Presented out of competition at TFF39, “Quattordici giorni” is the fourth feature film directed by Ivan Cotroneo, an acknowledged Italian television author and screenwriter, who decided to turn into a movie one of his novels from 2020, co-written with Monica Rametta, who was also involved in the screenwriting of the movie.
Continua la lettura di “QUATTORDICI GIORNI” BY IVAN COTRONEOArticle by Davide Gravina
Translated by Valerio Copponi
Never-ending opening credits, accompanied by shots of race cars burning rubber and going around in endless circles open the first feature film by Philippe Grégoire, premiered in competition at TFF39. The film, without sacrificing its biting humour, recounts a piece of Alexander Mastrogiuseppe’s life (Robert Naylor), a boy raised in Napierville, a remote and forgotten Canadian village, who leaves his birthplace to go work as a customs officer on the border between the US and Canada. Grégorie describes the same path which he has walked himself, going from living in his hometown to working as a customs officer, to be able to pay for his film studies. Migration towards a different world is just one of many points of contact between the director’s life and the protagonist’s. Indeed, he focuses on the cultural background to which he is bound, thanks to the racetrack built by his grandparents in Napierville.
Continua la lettura di “LE BRUIT DES MOTEURS” BY PHILIPPE GRÉGOIREArticle by Cristian Cerruti
Translated by Francesca Luna Lombardo
“Why can’t a woman be named Luciano?”
Lucy Salani
C’è un soffio di vita soltanto, presented in the section “Fuori concorso / L’incanto del reale”, tells the story of Luciano Salani, the oldest living transsexual in Italy, whose existence was marked by survival in the Dachau concentration camp. Starting from the idea of making a documentary on the story of a survivor, Botrugno and Coluccini find themselves faced with a character who goes far beyond any possible categorisation. Lucy is fluid, multifaceted, alien. A fluidity that emerges right from her choice to keep her first name: Luciano. The proposal to officially change her name to a feminine one, made several times to Lucy, has always received a negative answer. The name is not seen as a label to define her gender, but represents the memory of her parents, a memory that forges Lucy Salani’s personality.
Continua la lettura di “C’È UN SOFFIO DI VITA SOLTANTO” BY MATTEO BOTRUGNO AND DANIELE COLUCCINIArticle by Sara Longo
Translated by Mattia Prelle
The incorruptible agent Cheung Sung-bong (Donnie Yen) and his former partner Yau Kong-nao (Nicholas Tse) portray two faces of the same coin: facing each other is more or less like watching your own reflection through an opaque glass without recognizing yourself. Their destinies, indissolubly interwoven, could have switched, if they would have made different choices a long time ago. But now that the past is knocking at their door the time has come at last to settle the score.
Continua la lettura di “RAGING FIRE” BY BENNY CHANArticle by Marco Ghironi
Translated by Elèna Bellino
The radiant lightheartedness of youth in 1940s France, scourged by anti-Semitic laws. “Une jeune fille qui va bien” is the debut full-length movie by Sandrine Kiberlain, presented in May during la Semaine de la Critique in Cannes and in competition at the Torino Film Festival 39.
Continua la lettura di “UNE JEUNE FILLE QUI VA BIEN” BY SANDRINE KIBERLAIN
