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TORINO 38 SHORTS

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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“ZAHO ZAY” BY MAÉVA RANAÏVOJAONA AND GEORG TILLER

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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“DA LONTANO, PIÙ FORTE” BY ANNAMARIA MACRIPÒ

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

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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“HOCHWALD” BY EVI ROMEN

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

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

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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“MAPPING LESSONS” BY PHILIP RIZK

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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“BREEDER” BY JENS DAHL

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

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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ITALIANA.CORTI

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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“CAMP DE MACI” by EUGEN JEBELEANU

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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“AL LARGO” BY ANNA MARZIANO

Article by Francesco Dubini

Translated by Giulia Neirone

“A disorienting and extraordinary experience” that’s how Anna Marziano defines Al largo, her metamorphic and complex film, which combines philosophic research and cinematographic knowledge. The documentary wants to analyze the pain related to an illness, in a timeless context which connects the director’s personal experience and Nietzsche and Winnicott’s works.

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“CASA DE ANTIGUIDADES” BY JOÃO PAULO MIRANDA MARIA

Article 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.

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“LUCKY” BY NATASHA KERMANI – “REGRET” BY SANTIAGO MENGHINI

Article 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.

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“A MACHINE TO LIVE IN” BY YONI GOLDSTEIN and MEREDITH ZIELKE

Article 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.

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“MOVING ON” BY YOON DAN-BI

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.

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“WILDFIRE” BY CATHY BRADY

Article 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).

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“MICKEY ON THE ROAD” BY MIAN MIAN LU

Article 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.

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“GUNDA” by VICTOR KOSSAKOVSKY

Article 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.

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