Tutti gli articoli di Cecilia Tamburini

“VARGUR/VULTURES” BY BÖRKUR SIGBÓRSSON

Article by: Stefano Tropiano

Translation by: Cecilia Facchin

The noir genre allowed us to go over the classic detection storytelling, reenacting complicated situations and characters who are torn apart by their interior conflicts, but who are also part of the traditional dichotomy between good and evil. Vargur by Börkur Sigbórsson, whose title for the international distribution is Vultures, efficaciously recalls these lessons, in a powerful and dark noir both in setting and essence.

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“PRETENDERS” BY JAMES FRANCO

Article by: Roberto Guida

Translation by: Letizia Bosello

Jeanne is looking for Paul”. It wasn’t unusual to find such ads on many American newspapers during the 80s: young and aspiring Maria Schneiders were looking for dashing and aspiring Marlon Brandos in order to recreate the erotic passion scenes in Bertolucci’s masterpiece. Terry and Phil, classmates in film school, will both go through that. They are desperate, looking for comfort for the loss of Catherine, the girl they both love: the three of them are hardened cinephiles, grown up during the time the U.S.A. discover their personal nouvelle vague, the New Hollywood. Passion will guide them throughout life without, however, making them truly happy.

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“PORTA CAPUANA” BY MARCELLO SANNINO

Article by: Fulvio Melito

Translation by: Melania Petricola

The door is a multi-symbolic element, a self-assured space between the inside and the outside, it is a limit, an obstacle or a symbol of welcome and transition, a symbol of change. Marcello Sannino, around 2010, decides to talk about Naples and he does it by putting at the centre of his project Porta Capuana; he does not know yet what will be the outcome of the film but what he has for sure is the idea to try to represent Naples and its several peculiarities. Faces, objects, social gatherings, music, screams and laughter; everything passes through that monument which has always been a symbol of transition towards the heart of the city.  Staying nearby you can admire the everyday life that changes but that at the same time, perpetuates the usual routine.

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“IN QUESTO MONDO” BY ANNA KAUBER

Article by: Marco De Bartolomeo

Translation by: Maria Elisa Catalano

A quiet clearing in the mountais, the tinkling of cowbells, a shepherd playing the violin near the flock. It might seem to be an idyll, a fiction, a delicate literary landscape like the one that we find in Virgilio’s Bucoliche, or from Tasso’s Aminta; but here, the mountains are in Veneto, the sheep are called by their names and the shepherd is actually a girl who has preferred pastoralism to the passion for music.

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“HIGH LIFE” BY CLAIRE DENIS

Article by: Chiara Rosaia

Translation by: Luca Bassani

Deconstructing the concept of genre, emptying it of any previous framework, is Claire Denis’s well-established habit. This time, the French filmmaker decided to do so through science fiction, keeping in mind her usual trademark approach.

High Life tells the story of a group of convicts, lifers and death row inmates who choose to spend the rest of their lives in outer space: in exchange for a pardon, they need to take part in an overtly suicidal scientific experiment.

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“DRIVE ME HOME” BY SIMONE CATANIA

Article by: Tommaso Dufour

Translation by: Gianmarco Caniglia

One man from Caserta and the other from Rome: a few months ago, they did not know each other, but they have more than a few things in common. Marco D’Amore and Vinicio Marchioni are two talented actors with a solid experience. They have common theatrical backgrounds and frequent movie appearances, in addition to being well established among the public of the TV series made by the same director, Stefano Sollima, who “launched” the former with Romanzo Criminale (2008-2010) and the latter with Gomorra (2014 – ongoing). Today they are in Turin to present the first work of a young director, Simone Catania, a producer of documentary films who committed the two actors to a road movie that is touring Italy and Europe. Continua la lettura di “DRIVE ME HOME” BY SIMONE CATANIA

“NERVOUS TRANSLATION” BY SHIREEN SENO

Article by: Beatrice Ceravolo

Translation by: Priscilla Valente

Shireen Seno’s second feature-length film is not the common coming of age. The director claims that she had the idea for it in a dream, and the relationship between real and oneiric and between interior and exterior represents the focus of the film. The audience witnesses a fundamental moment in Yael’s life, a shy child who spends her days alone waiting for her mother to come back home or listening to messages on tapes sent by her absent father. The main character’s obsessions, confusion and solitude are reproduced with the awareness of someone who experienced them and did not forget them. Seno told in a Q&A that much of herself has been poured into the character of Yael, both into her personality and into her experience of familiar expatriation. The growing  experience of the character in such a delicate moment of her life may echo something into every one of us.

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“DEN SKYLDIGE/THE GUILTY” BY GUSTAV MÖLLER

Article by: Annagiulia Zoccarato

Translated by: Cecilia Facchin

Over the past few years, we have been used to see high-quality films coming from Scandinavia, and in particular Denmark. This is also proved by the fact that films such as The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg and Land of Mine by Martin Zandvliet entered the top five Academy Awards nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. It is important to mention these films, because The Guilty (Den Skyldige in Danish), first work of young Danish director Gustav Möller, is both one of the nominees for the TFF36 contest and Denmark’s choice for the next Academy Awards.

It should be added, as pointed out by producer Lina Flint during the press conference, that “in Scandinavia there’s a generation of filmmakers who grew up with noir and wanted to offer something new to their audiences in order to promote this genre”. Möller belongs to this new wave of brilliantly written and staged noir, thanks to his brilliant and confident first work, that never ceases to impress.

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“ATLAS” BY DAVID NAWRATH

Article by: Tommaso Dufour

Translation by: Giulia Quercia

Family, interpersonal relationships, forgiveness and violence are just a few of the topics that we can find in David Nawrath’s first feature film. The German director, with the producer Britta Knoller, has presented his film at the TFF36 contest. Walter (Rainer Bock) is the protagonist’s name whom, employed by an entrepreneur colluded with mob, clearing evicted residents’ houses for a living; stoically resisting to trouble and being indifferent to the youngest colleagues’ brutality and aggressiveness, he lives alone, speaks as less as he can and sleeps on the floor of his apartment. Even if it seems like the external events don’t affect him directly, his life is going to change.

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“CHI-TOWN” BY NICK BUDABIN

Article by: Lorenzo Radin

Translation by: Letizia Bosello

It’s funny how our concept of “self-realisation” may change. Leaving the suburbs of Chicago, learning a new sport in the streets, becoming the Horizon League’s “player of the year” for two years in a row, being a step away from the NBA and being transferred to one of the major Italian professional teams means being successful. However, someone in the audience disagrees: if a basketball player doesn’t join the NBA, he is a loser.

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“FIRST NIGHT NERVES” BY STANLEY KWAN

Article by: Gianluca Tana

Translation by: Alice Marchi

Director Stanley Kwan doesn’t need introduction. First Night Nerves represents for the director, who grew up during the Second New Wave of the Hong Kong cinema, a chance to come back home after a long absence. Even if many sequences have been filmed in a sound stage, the city plays a marginal yet fundamental role. The director sets the scene of the fictitious play Two Sisters in the Hong Kong city hall, for which a demolition proposal has been recently put forward. The director’s choice is a declaration of love for this building, where he spent a lot of time directing plays or taking part in film festivals. Continua la lettura di “FIRST NIGHT NERVES” BY STANLEY KWAN

“THE MAN WHO STOLE BANKSY” BY MARCO PROSERPIO

Article by: Laura Barbella

Translation by: Melania Petricola

Bodybuilder, taxi driver, thief and art dealer: Walid called The Beast is the first person that the director Marco Proserpio met after crossing the checkpoint from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Along the way the huge taxi driver told him about how he carried off four tons of cement from the artwork Donkey with the Soldier by Banksy and how he put it up for auction on eBay for 100.000$.

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“BLAZE” BY ETHAN HAWKE

Article by: Maria Cagnazzo

Translation by: Giulia Maiorana

The description of someone’s life through words and musical notes. This is Blaze, a film by Ethan Hawke, presented in the Festa Mobile section at the 36th Torino Film Festival. It is the story of the country singer Blaze Foley, who died at the age of 40 because of his extreme dissoluteness, or for his audacity.

The narration is a constant coming and going between past and present, as a matter of fact it unravels in three different time-frames: Blaze’s life with his muse before success; the singer after Sibyl; friends who talk about him on the radio after his death.

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“53 WOJNY” BY EWA BUKOWSKA

Article by: Cristian Viteritti

Translation by: Cinzia Angelini

An explosion is a rapid and localized release of energy, mainly consisting in an exothermic decomposition of explosives, generally following an ignition; or in the sudden and fast expansion of a compressed gas. It is followed by significant effects due to the transformation into mechanical work of the energy released. If the explosion interacts with obstacles, the more the surface invested is and the closer it is to the centre of the explosion, the greater the energy exerted on themselves is. Which means that, if a bomb explodes close to a man’s body, it will be completely disintegrated.

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“TYREL” BY SEBASTIÁN SILVA

Article by: Elisabetta Vannelli

Translation by: Laura Facciolo

Loneliness is an emotion that you can feel in an empty room as well as in a square full of people. It’s a reflection of the private feeling of inadequacy, a physical limit that it’s hard to overpass.

Sebastián Silva is a young Chilean director who is now committed in the United States. After presenting another film  called La nana (The Maid  2009), now he returns at the Torino Film Festival in the After Hours section with his film Tyrel (2018), which has been presented at the Sundance Film Festival in a world premiere. In the United States this film has been defined as “the new Get Out(Get Out, 2017, Jordan Peele). Tyler (Jason Mitchell) is an Afro-American boy who spends a weekend with a group of white guys, but he can’t fit in because he is black.

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“NOS BATAILLES” BY GUILLAUME SENEZ

Article by: Gianmarco Perrone

Translation by: Gianmarco Caniglia

Two battles, running in parallel but intertwined, are evoked by the title of this brilliant feature and told with remarkable mastery.

Turin’s audience already knows Guillaume Senez for his debut film Keeper, winner of the Turin Film Festival in 2015. This year the French-Belgian director competes in the main section with Nos Batailles, that investigates the difficulties of a man facing the collapse of his every certainty.

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“MADELINE’S MADELINE” BY JOSEPHINE DECKER

Article by: Alessia Durante

Translation by: Letizia Bosello

A woman talking about emotions to a cat. Maybe. A girl purring to her mother as if she was a cat. Some women wandering on a stage with fake pork heads on, creepy as if they were real. These are some of the images shown in the first five minutes of Josephine Decker’s new feature film, presented at the Torino Film Festival. The resulting confusion is the only certain element perceived by the audience, and it immediately appears as the film’s main feature, which is disturbing both in contents and in representation. Continua la lettura di “MADELINE’S MADELINE” BY JOSEPHINE DECKER

“WILDLIFE” BY PAUL DANO

Article by: Giorgia Bertino

Translation by: Cecilia Facchin

Some people may remember him as the quiet and peevish guy hidden by his long black hair in Little Miss Sunshine, or as a writer on the verge of a crisis who falls in love with one of his characters in Ruby Sparks; for all the film-lovers, he is also an actor pushed down by the weight of a career born and dead in blockbusters in Youth, and, for the most curious ones, he is the best friend of a zombie with superpowers in the eccentric Swiss Army Man. It goes without saying: Paul Dano acted in many movies, working with directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Ang Lee, Steve McQueen, Paolo Sorrentino and Denis Villeneuve. It is important to keep that in mind if you are watching the first film directed by this 34-year-old man, who decided to take on the challenge of filmmaking after many years of acting at high levels.

Wildlife – one of the nominees for the TFF36 contest – tells the slow and transparent story of the implosion of a family which moves to Montana.

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“HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD” BY BEN WHEATLEY

Article by: Elisabetta Vannelli

Translated by: Alice Marchi

“If they don’t dance, they fight”. With these words Colin, the oldest son, tries to keep his relatives from fighting. The Bursteads are a disfunctional family, who decides to spend New Year’s Eve in a country villa in Dorset. Colin tries to keep everything under control but the sudden comeback of his brother David – reckless womanizer who abandoned his wife and kids –  brings back his old deep resentment against him. Continua la lettura di “HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD” BY BEN WHEATLEY

“FIGURAS” BY EUGENIO CANEVARI

Article by: Beatrice Ceravolo

Translation by: Luca Bassani

“Do you like black and white films? No? Neither do I”. This is the question Valeria asks her mother Stella, and she does so in a documentary which is shot entirely in black and white. As stated by director Eugenio Canevari during his Q&A at Cinema Massimo, this film comes from an urgent need. After meeting Valeria and getting to know her difficult situation, Canevari felt that he had to do something for this family of three that was struggling with an ailment such as ALS, with no help from any institution whatsoever. The footage was collected through daily, thorough observation of Stella’s reality. Once a very dynamic woman, she ended up having to rely on her daughter and her boyfriend Paco, who also struggles with health issues, to help her in her daily life. Therefore, there was no script during the shooting: the director had to join different elements in order to create an accessible story for the audience.

In this sense, Canevari’s work is indeed praiseworthy: the director’s camera follows the three figuras discretely and respectfully, daring to show each and every part of this sickness without blaming the daughter, who finds it difficult to handle her mother’s profound change. The shots often reflect every character’s claustrophobia by showing the oppressive spaces inside Stella’s flat and enclosing them in frames which consist of doors, door frames and narrow hallways. The main narrative is also punctuated by the parties Valeria goes to in the evening, which represent the passing of days.

Stella cannot speak anymore, but her gentle and alert presence is audible as it is visible: Stella can be heard anywhere, with her breath, the tablet on which she continuously plays with interactive figuras of animals in order to keep her mind active, her loud western films, her old-fashioned songs and the Argentinian tango she dances with Paco, with the help of her medical walker. The overt choice of the black and white aesthetic fits this vision: Stella was living in another time and in another space, watching western films all day long, and Canevari managed to represent this distance through such technique.

The film does not dwell solely on the tragic aspects of the story, as explicitly wanted by the director, but it sometimes alternates impotence with humour, especially from Paco’s character. Canevari and Valeria stated that elements of fiction were added to the real facts in order to tell Stella’s story in the best way, considering that the film is dedicated to her.

At the end of the screening, some members of the audience went to hug Valeria and Canevari, who told them: “The film is for you”. And we thank him.