Tutti gli articoli di Anna Pasqualetto

“BETWEEN TWO DAWNS” BY SELMAN NACAR

Article by Luca Delpiano

Translated by Alexandra Oancea

In competition at the TFF39, the first feature film of the Turkish director Selman Nacar is an ethical and psychological drama that focuses on the process of change, fixing each of its smallest steps.

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“THE EDGE OF DAYBREAK” BY TAIKI SAKPISIT

Article by Davide Gravina

Translated by Rebeca Tirgovetu

The Incubator section of the TFF39 presents the first feature film by the Thailandese film director Taiki Sakpisit. Starting from a birthmark on the neck, moving on to the body of a half dead little girl, until arriving to a candid white dress, the director creates the gelid portrait of a deep inquietude transforming it in pure poetry.

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“ITALIA, IL FUOCO E LA CENERE” BY OLIVIER BOHLER AND CÉLINE GAILLEURD

Article by Alice Ferro

Translated by Mirko Giumentaro

Italia, il fuoco e la cenere is a poetic and oneiric journey through the divas, ghosts, lights, and shadows of Italian silent cinema. It explores its most material essence, it brings its lantern closer to the flesh, the bodies, the bare shoulders in the half-light, the penetrating gazes, the feverish convulsions of the divas. The erotic component is central: cinema made the prudes tremble, in the darkened rooms it allowed women and men to blend. The cinematic exploration becomes a historical exploration and paints the reality of a country in constant transformation, from the pompous and resplendent scenes to the decadence and abyss of fascism that are inexorably approaching.

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“GROSSE FREIHEIT” BY SEBASTIAN MEISE

Article by Giulia Seccia

Translated by Elena Soldà

A match that lights up in complete darkness. This is the symbol on which Grosse Freiheit / Great Freedom, a film directed by Sebastian Meise in competition at the Torino Film Festival stands. It won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes, and it will be presented by Austria as an Oscar candidate 2022.

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“ALONERS” BY HONG SEONG-EUN

Article 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.

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“TASTE” BY LÊ BAO

Article 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.

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“LUZ VIAJE OSCURO” BY TIN DIRDAMAL, EVA CADENA

Article 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.

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BETWEEN PERFORMERS AND SCREEN: TFF’S MASTERCLASSES DEDICATED TO THE ACTOR

Article 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.

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“SI PUDIERA DESEAR” ALGO BY DORA GARCIA

Article 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”.

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“THE DAY IS OVER” BY QI RUI

Article 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.

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“NUMBER ONE” BY GIANNI BUFFARDI

Article 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

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“LE BRUIT DES MOTEURS” BY PHILIPPE GRÉGOIRE

Article 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.

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“C’È UN SOFFIO DI VITA SOLTANTO” BY MATTEO BOTRUGNO AND DANIELE COLUCCINI

Article 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.

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“RAGING FIRE” BY BENNY CHAN

Article 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.

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“UNE JEUNE FILLE QUI VA BIEN” BY SANDRINE KIBERLAIN

Article 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.

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“BIPOLAR” BY QUEENA LI

Article by Niccolò Buttigliero

Translated by Lorenzo Papa and Elena Soldà

Bipolar inaugurates the new section of the Torino Film Festival called “Incubator”, a new space dedicated to idiosyncratic gazes, to what cannot be pigeonholed. A feverish creative buzz that Queena Li perfectly conveys in her movie.

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