Out of Competition
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Something broke
Amref Health Africa - Italy
Even the biggest challenges involve small daily gestures. An example is Nice Nailantei Leng’ete, an Amref Health Africa world ambassador against female genital mutilation. For her commitment, Nice has been included among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine, but her greatest challenge, that of protecting girls and women, is hindered by the absence of water in times of drought, or by floods blocking the streets. Nice is just one of the protagonists of "Something Broke," a short film that uses the unique voice of Fiorella Mannoia to evoke, in a poetic way, the fracture created in the balance between African women and water. It is a precarious balance which has degenerated into a daily struggle due to climate change. On the one hand, there are the women who travel hundreds of miles through a barren land every day in search of water to share with their family and their cattle, which is essential for their livelihood. On the other hand, there is water: so longed for, which “falls endlessly, meaninglessly, under a violent sky”, devastating everything, sowing death and destruction.
Bad Fadàu
Matteo Incollu / Italy (19'41'')
Set in the region of Sardinia in Italy in 1942. When a village fool retrieves a radio from a crashed German warplane, a mysterious, eerie voice emerges from the radio and starts to haunt him.
Samuh Sakhi - The women's friend
Pangea Onlus Foundation - Nicola Baraglia
Samuh Sakhi are the hundred women who, in the twelve villages of North East India, lead other thousand women in a project of female empowerment organised by Pangea Onlus Foundation. Pangea accompanies them on this journey, giving them a better future. Samuh Sakhi is also a needle that sews a necklace of flowers, a drop of water that returns to the village, a seed planted with extreme care, an alley that is filled with sewing machines and colourful clothes, a star that lights up the sky in Varanasi.
Premiere Film Special Screenings
A pair
Davide Petrosino / Italy (22')
Anna and Diego meet in Rome in a hot summer morning. They hadn’t seen each other for a while. They had been in a relationship for two years but then they broke up and now Anna lives in Milan while Diego lives in Naples. They were still a couple when they baught two tickets for Bruce Springsteen’s gig that would take place in a few months. Now, the gig’s day has come and Anna, who was keeping both the tickets, has to meet Diego and give him his ticket. Her plan was to go to the gig separately, but Diego has a different idea. So, after some argument, he persuades Anna to spend the day together with him while waiting for the concert to get started. During those hours, they have the chance to come to terms with all the old scores, the hesitations, the grudges and the nostalgia that inevitably come after a break up. The waiting for the gig fades soon into the background and that day becomes the occasion for Diego and Anna – maybe the last one – to understand what they’ve been together and what they’re going to be in the future.
Trojans
Stefano Santamato / Italy (16')
The film tells the poignant story that lies behind the scene of Euripides’ The Trojan Women performed at Syracuse Greek Theater, Sicily, in summer 2019. The famous Greek tragedy tells the aftermath of the defeat of Troy, when women were assigned as slaves to the winners and the city was set on fire. To depict that ravaged scenario, architect Stefano Boeri, who designed the stage set, found inspiration in the waste land left behind by Vaia Storm, extreme atmospheric event linked to climate change. In one single night, in
October 2018, rain and wind tore down 14 million trees, transforming a lush mountain landscape in northern Italy into an apocalyptic ground, with environmental consequences that will affect life in the area for many a decades to come. In Carnia, one of the worst hit areas, 400 of those trunks were retrieved, and from there travelled to Syracuse, opposite end of Italy, where on the Greek theater stage they gained a last role, as mute witnesses of both tragedies. The film tells their journey as if through their own eyes, along 1500 Km and across a variety of landscapes, colors and sounds.
Homecoming
Antonio De Gregorio and Mattia Marano / Italy (17')
'Live or dead ... we'll bring it to you in 24 hours!' this is the slogan of a particular Milanese funeral agency, that organizes funerals throughout Italy with a low price. Nanni, who works there, will therefore have to bring an old widow to bury her late husband in a small village in Molise, but the problems with the local populations will complicate everything.
I offer
Paola Minaccioni / Italy (12')
A quiet evening out between two couples of friends from Rome well becomes a ruthless and violent struggle that nobody is willing to lose. In fact, an apparent harmless gesture of courtesy triggers a surreal escalation of generosity, transforming what was supposed to be a relaxing evening with old friends, into a crazy and surreal challenge to the last tip.
“ER CÒLLERA MÒRIBBUS” Conversation at the Osteria in Piazza della Gensola
Matteo De Laurentiis and Katia Franco / Italy (8')
March 2020. In the midst of pandemic and lockdown, Rome, now free from the chaos that normally imprisons her every day, silently celebrates her churches and empty edifices, her deserted piazzas, her monumental statuary and mute fountains. Lost in the contemplation of a beauty that seems to endure perfectly well without human beings, the question arises: what will become of us? The answers are found in verses Gioacchino Belli wrote in 1835, on the occasion of the cholera epidemic that afflicted the city, and which, heard again today read by Pierfrancesco Favino, console us during one of our history’s most traumatic junctures. The poem assures us that it will not be any "holy scourge" that defeats us, no, because Rome is eternal, her voice is eternal – as well as her sense of life’s endless paradox.