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Main Sponsor Venice September 2-12, 2015
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Venice September 2-12, 2015
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National Union of Italian Film Critics (SNCCI) President: Franco Montini
la Biennale di Venezia President: Paolo Baratta
72. Venice International Film Festival
Director: Alberto Barbera
30. Venice International Film Critics’ Week September 2-12, 2015
Selection Committee
Francesco Di Pace (General Delegate) Nicola Falcinella
Giuseppe Gariazzo Anna Maria Pasetti
Luca Pellegrini
Programming Office Eddie Bertozzi
Anette Dujisin-Muharay Palazzo del Cinema – Lungomare Marconi
30126 Lido di Venezia (VE) - Italy T: +39 041 2726679
[email protected] - www.sicvenezia.it
Press Office Gabriele Barcaro
[email protected] M: +39 340 5538425
SNCCI Administration Office
Patrizia Piciacchia Via delle Alpi, 30 - 00198 Roma
T: +39 06 4824713 [email protected] – www.sncci.it
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The Venice International Film Critics’ Week is an independent section of the Venice International Film Festival, exclusively dedicated to first-time directors’ full-length films. Founded by Lino Micciché in 1984, the Venice International Film Critics’ Week has been from the beginning committed to finding, promoting and consolidating new voices and emerging talents of world cinema. Over its 30 editions, the Venice International Film Critics’ Week discovered and launched young filmmakers that soon became renowned authors in the international panorama, such as: Kevin Reynolds (Fandango, 1985), Olivier Assayas (Désordre, 1986), Alex Van Warmerdam (Abel, 1986), Carlo Mazzacurati (Notte italiana, 1987), Paolo Benvenuti (Il bacio di Giuda, 1988), John Hillcoat (Ghosts…of the Civil Dead, 1988), Mike Leigh (High Hope, 1988), Bruce Weber (Let’s Get Lost, 1988), Pedro Costa (O sangue, 1989), Sergio Rubini (La stazione, 1990), Cédric Kahn (Bar des rails, 1991), Bryan Singer (Public Access, 1993), Rachid Benhadj (Touchia, 1993), Harmony Korine (Gummo, 1997), Roberta Torre (Tano da morire, 1997), Peter Mullan (Orphans, 1998), Pablo Trapero (Mundo grua, 1999), Vincenzo Marra (Tornando a casa, 2001), Celina Murga (Ana y los otros, 2003), Salvatore Mereu (Ballo a tre passi, 2003), Royston Tan (15, 2003), Rian Johnson (Brick, 2005), Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, 2006), Andrea Molaioli (La ragazza del lago, 2007), Syllas Tzoumèrkas (Homeland, 2010), Alix Delaporte (Angèle et Tony, 2010). The latest winners of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week were Pernilla August (Beyond, 2010), Guido Lombardi (Là-bas, 2011), Gabriela Pichler (Eat Sleep Die, 2012), Matteo Oleotto (Zoran, il mio nipote scemo, 2013) and Vuk Ršumovi� (No One’s Child, 2015). Furthermore, among the authors discovered by the Venice International Film Critics’ Week and winners of the Lion of the Future - “Luigi De Laurentiis” Award for a Debut Film we can find Giovanni Davide Maderna (Questo è il giardino, 1999), Abdel Kechiche (La faute à Voltaire, 2000), Dylan Kidd (Roger Dodger, 2002), Ismaël Ferroukhi (Le grand voyage, 2004), Gianni Di Gregorio (Pranzo di ferragosto, 2008), Guido Lombardi (Là-bas, 2011), Ali Aydın (Muffa, 2012) and Noaz Deshe (White Shadow, 2013).
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ALESSANDRO RAK AUTHORS THE NEW OPENING SEQUENCE OF THE VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM CRITICS’ WEEK
An animated gem from the director of L’arte della felicità will open the screenings of
the 30th edition
To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the Venice International Film Critics’ Week chose to renew its opening sequence by handing it over to Alessandro Rak (director of L’arte della felicità, a Critics’ Week debut), who delivered an animated gem that from this year will welcome the audience before each screening. “The new opening sequence – explains the General Delegate Francesco Di Pace – it’s a beautiful present that makes us very happy: it lasts only 40 seconds, but it is a small animation film signed by an author that started his successful career right here at Critics’ Week that took him all the way to the European Film Award to be awarded with the best European animated film prize. We thank Alessandro Rak and factory MAD and wish them the best of luck for what we believe will be a great set of successes” New talents Cinema is a city returned to nature, the daughter of civilization, of language, remaining, nonetheless savage. The critics’ boat gently advances between canals, its eyes are everywhere, although the cinematographic beast is a roller coaster, a camera born to prey and take off. Those who love her shall follow her. “The opening sequence – explains the author, Alessandro Rak – it’s nothing more than a night sigh: from wake it goes into the night of new cinema, without notable stars giving judgment or preconceived ideas, just the need for a new path. Wake-up at the end of the week, with a headache, or at best, with just some broken bones. As if we slept too much in someone else’s dream. Or in a good mood, satisfied first thing in the morning, as if one lied in its own certainties for too long” TECHNIQUE: Digital Animation 2D AUTHOR: Alessandro Rak ORIGINAL MUSIC: Antonio Fresa PRODUCTION: MAD Entertainment
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30. Venice International Film Critics’ Week
September 2-12, 2015
The seven films in competition are:
Ana Yurdu (Motherland) by Senem Tüzen Turkey-Greece, 2015 – World Premiere
Banat (Il viaggio) (Banat) by Adriano Valerio Italy-Romania-Bulgaria-Macedonia, 2015 – World Premiere
Kalo Pothi (The Black Hen) by Min Bahadur Bham
Nepal-France-Germany, 2015 – World Premiere
Light Years by Esther May Campbell United Kingdom, 2015 – World Premiere
Montanha by João Salaviza
Portugal-France, 2015 – World Premiere
The Return by Green Zeng Singapore, 2015 – World Premiere
Tanna by Martin Butler and Bentley Dean Australia-Vanuatu, 2015 – World Premiere
Special Events Out of Competition:
Pre-Opening Jia (The Family) by Liu Shumin
Australia-China, 2015 - World Premier
Opening Film Saturnia Prize – SIC 30 Special Award
Orphans by Peter Mullan United Kingdom, 1998
Closing Film – Special Event Out of Competition
Bagnoli Jungle by Antonio Capuano Italy, 2015 – World Premiere
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SATURNIA PRIZE – SIC 30 SPECIAL AWARD for BEST DEBUT FILM in the
history of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week
to PETER MULLAN for Orphans (1998)
To celebrate its 30th edition, the Venice International Film Critics’ Week (September 2-12, 2015) – an independent section of the Venice Film Festival – is glad to announce its guest of honour: director and actor PETER MULLAN, who will receive the SATURNIA PRIZE – SIC 30 SPECIAL AWARD. This prize (voted by the members of the National Union of Italian Film Critics) recognizes the best debut feature film presented in the entire history of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week. Among all the debut films that have been presented in the section, Peter Mullan’s 1998 Orphans stood out in the critics’ poll. Already well known as an actor (winner of a Golden Palm for Best Actor with Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe that same year), as first-time director Mullan – who will later become Golden Lion winner with The Magdalene Sisters (2002) – immediately won critical and audience acclaim. Marked by a distinctive black humour, the film is a merciless portrait of four siblings who get together in Glasgow to mourn the death of their mother. After more than fifteen years, Orphans will be shown again in Venice on Thursday, September 3rd (courtesy of Park Circus Limited) as the Special Opening Event of the 30th Venice International Film Critics’ Week. The film will astonish a new generation of cinephiles for its confidence in blending humour and drama, finding its best moments “when you don’t know if you should laugh or burst into tears”, as the director stated back in 1998. Peter Mullan will be in Venice to attend the screening and meet with the audience and the press. Besides Orphans, the critics’ top-five debuts were Olivier Assayas’s Disorder (1986), Pablo Trapero’s Crane World (1999), Abdellatif Kechiche’s Poetical Refugee (2000), and Andrea Molaioli’s The Girl By the Lake (2007). “We are proud to celebrate this very special birthday of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week with Peter Mullan and his astonishing debut film Orphans – declared Venice Critics’ Week General Delegate Francesco Di Pace. Thirty years of passion, hard work, and big satisfactions where Critics’ Week discovered a number of new auteurs who soon after became internationally acclaimed directors. I sincerely wish to thank all those who have contributed to the success of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week, the critics who served in the various selection committees and the general delegates who coordinated their work throughout the years”.
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The seven films in competition at the 30. Venice International Film Critics’ Week are eligible for two awards:
• Pietro Barzisa Audience Award – 30. Venice International Film Critics’ Week
The seven films in competition are eligible for the “Pietro Barzisa Audience Award”, sponsored by Circolo del Cinema di Verona and consisting of 5,000 Euro.
• Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” Award for a Debut Film
The seven films in competition as well as all the debut features presented in the competitive sections of the festival are eligible for the “Lion of the Future – ‘Luigi De Laurentiis’ Award for a Debut Film”. The prize, consisting of 100,000 USD, is offered by Aurelio and Luigi De Laurentiis’ Filmauro and will be equally divided between the director and the producer.
Once more, FEDEORA – Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean – will award two collateral prizes to films presented at the Venice International Film Critics’ Week: one for Best Film, and one for Best Script, Best Cinematography, or Best Actor/Actress.
The Venice International Film Critics’ Week’s is once again pleased to be supported by BNL – BNP Paribas Group, a bank traditionally committed to support Italian cinema and international film festivals. Thanks to the patronage of Region of Veneto, the films of the Venice International Film Critic’s Week will be screened after the conclusion of the Venice International Film Festival in several cities of Veneto, and thanks to the funds of the Autonomous Province of Trento and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, some of the titles will also reach those two cities.
The Venice International Film Critics’ Week further benefits from the invaluable support of important partners such as Tiziana Rocca Comunicazione, Hotel Saturnia and Istituto Luce-Cinecittà. Lastly, The Venice International Film Critics’ Week is delighted to collaborate with media partners FRED, a multi-language web radio; Festival Scope, an online platform for film industry professionals; and Quinlan, a film critic magazine. All press materials are available for download at the following link: www.sicvenezia.it/stampa
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30. Venice International Film Critics’ Week September 2-12, 2015
la Biennale di Venezia
and the National Union of Italian Film Critics present
the line-up of the 30. Venice International Film Critics’ Week
The mark of the 30th edition represents for the Venice International Film Critics’ Week a clear reason for satisfaction, but also the right moment to think back, not only in a commemorative way, to the work developed in the last 30 years by the several selection committees. How much cinema has changed through time is clear to everyone: the production possibilities have changed for a first time filmmaker, certainly for the best, giving easier and simpler access to the means of production; for the worst it changed due to the contraction of economic investment, be that public as well as private. The ways of consumption also altered, specifically for the so called art-house cinema; on one side there are less screens dedicated to this kind of cinema, although on the other side, extraordinary possibilities of access are emerging through new online and VoD platforms, some more some less legal. The constant effort of this section, organized by the National Union of Italian Film Critics’ is that of finding at an international level directors who are capable of proposing a renewal of cinema, of unfolding talents filled with courage but also with a certain thoughtlessness, typical of a debut, to anticipate tendencies and not to simply pursue reassuring paths. This year’s program is richer than ever and includes some celebrative moments that refer to our history: a Special Award to the Best Debut over the last 30 years, conferred through a referendum by Italian Film Critics’ to director and actor Peter Mullan, that in 1998 revealed his talent within the Critics’ Week program with his film Orphans, for then to win a Golden Lion with Magdalene four years later. Orphans will be screened in the opening day of Critics’ Week, with the presence of the author. The closing event of this is edition is equally commemorative. In 1991 the Critics’ Week award went to Antonio Capuano’s Vito e gli altri (Vito and the others). Twenty-four years later and with a filmography that testifies a very personal and independent cinematographic path, never compromised with imperative fashions or tendencies, Capuano presents to Critics’ Week his latest film Bagnoli Jungle, yet another example of expressive and courageous freedom. A film that confronts three generations, through stories that merge into each other, that move in a difficult territory, often degraded but extremely vital as the northern periphery of Naples that developed around the former industrial complex of Bagnoli. Both films not casually tackle certain topics that blend with the titles in our program: disrupted families, adolescent crisis and parental conflicts, generations that confront each other in their private lives but also politically, disorientation induced by the economic crisis that force drastic life choices. To the seven titles in competition, this year, we unexpectedly added another title presented as pre-opening. It’s a coup de foudre that lasts 4 hours and 40 minutes: it’s called Jia (The Family), and it’s the debut of a Chinese filmmaker of Australian citizenship, Liu Shumin. With autobiographical tones but fictionalized, Liu uses non professional but extremely expressive actors to recount a few days in the life of an old couple who live in an inland city of China. He follows movements and every-day rituals, relationship subtleties with their three children, their common worries and the threats of old age, through a long voyage that both undertake to visit
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their children. With them, we will discover a country in profound transformation, balanced between tradition and modernity. Two young people cross their paths escaping a jobless reality without perspective and a broken marriage in the Italian film in competition: Banat by Adriano Valerio. From Puglia to Romania through a reverse migration process, agronomist Ivo (a convincing Edoardo Gabriellini) drags with him the destiny of Clara (an intense Elena Radonicich). A film that reveals a strong talent of a director already awarded with a David di Donatello and with a special mention in Cannes for his short-film. Similarly, the director of the Portuguese film Montanha, João Salaviza displays a very respectable pedigree: winner of both a Palme d’Or in Cannes and a Golden Bear in Berlin with two of his short-films, enriches the Critics’ Week program with his first long feature film where he recounts a special moment in the life of David, a 14 year old boy who is living a crucial moment of his existence, forced to grow up fast, lacking strong family reference points. A fascinating and poetic gem, in line with the most successful tradition of contemporary Portuguese cinema. Another family painfully marked by the momentary absence of their mother and the mysterious disappearance of their father, is exposed in the British revelation film, Light Years by Esther May Campbell, a young filmmaker who already directed a multiple awarded short film as well as TV series episodes. Three kids of different ages are forced to face “light years” distance that separates them from adulthood, in a walked road movie that will guide them through the consciousness of the real world that surrounds them. A certain discovery of this selection. A very present mother that represents a traditional and preconceived conception of the world is found in the Turkish film of the second female director present in the selection, Senem Tüzen. In Ana yurdu (Motherland), the writer Nesrin, an emancipated woman with two marriages and an abortion behind her, returns to her hometown to confront herself with her past ghosts. A very personal but at the same time a political film. Yet another sample of the exemplary state of the art of Turkish cinematography. In the Yakel tribe living in the Tanna Island, there is no such thing as love marriages. Rules impose arranged marriages that also solve conflicts with neighboring communities. The film Tanna by Australian duo Martin Butler and Bentley Dean, documentary filmmakers who for the first time turn to fiction, tells the love story between Wawa and Dain, a relationship that will be opposed until the very end and with extreme consequences. A flaming mise en scene, just like the archipelago’s volcano at the center of the film, using local indigenous people as actors. A beautiful and eccentric melodrama. Politics as a ghost from the past reappear in the Singaporean film, The Return by Green Zeng: an old man returns home to his daughter and son after spending decades in jail accused of communism, an accusation that in the Singaporean regime equals one of the worst crimes. Wen will be confronted in the acceptance of his closest family and will also have to face the deep transformation that his country went through, in a film with one of the most refined and classic styles of the entire selection. Political conflicts are also in the background of the first Nepalese long feature film ever premiered in Venice, a debut by Min Bahadur Bham, who already presented his previous short film in Venice. In Kalo Pothi (The Black Hen) the adventures of two kids and their hen are intertwined with those of the community of a small village consumed by the civil war between government army and Maoist guerrilla (we are at the end of the 90s). A delicious adventure film that will certainly conquer passionate fans.
Francesco Di Pace
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ANA YURDU (Motherland) Turkey-Greece, 2015, col., 98’ Director: Senem Tüzen. Screenplay: Senem Tüzen. Cinematography: Vedat Özdemir. Editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Adam Isenberg, Senem Tüzen. Sound: Leandros Ntonis. Art Direction: Metin Celik. Cast: Esra Bezen Bilgin (Nesrin), Nihal Koldas (Halise), Semih Aydin (Halil), Fatma Kısa (Emine). Production: Olena Yershova (Zela Film), Adam Isenberg, Senem Tüzen. Executive Producer: Baris Yildrim Co-production: Nikos Moutselos (2|35). Nesrin, an urban upper-middle class woman, goes back to her parents’ old village in Anatolia to finish a novel and live out her dream of being a writer. When her conservative mother turns up uninvited and refuses to leave, Nesrin’s writing stalls and her fantasies of village life turn bitter. The two woman are forced to confront the darker corners of each other’s inner worlds. We are not in the busy streets of the capital city filled with youngsters, but in a remote town in Anatolia, of deserted sidewalks and rundown houses. It is there that women, custodians of memories and pain, talk, wait, pray and get old. Nasrin arrives to this “Motherland” full of anger and lost expectations, with lovers and lives left behind, starving for a future and for coherence in this suspended Turkey. It’s a mirror of today’s urban populations’ fluid identities. Senem Tüzen captures with strong and raw images this not only ideal but also real confrontation between a daughter and a mother, between the traditional and religious past and the present, an uncertain guardian of new values and perspectives, also guardian of violence. A set of stories and a way of recounting them that honor Turkish cinema. Senem Tüzen, born in Ankara in 1980, holds a degree in cinema from the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Academy of Istanbul. She directed a number of short films that have been awarded worldwide. In particular, her short Unus Mundus won the Turkish Film Critics Association’s Best Short Award in 2009. The same year, her short Milk and Chocolate was nominated for the same prize. Besides directing, she also works as an editor, cinematographer and producer. Ana yurdu (Motherland) is her first full-length film.
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BANAT (IL VIAGGIO) (Banat) Italy-Romania-Bulgaria-Macedonia, 2015, col., 82’ Director: Adriano Valerio. Screenplay: Adriano Valerio, Ezio Abbate. Cinematography: Jonathan Richenbourg. Editing: Catalin Cristutiu. Music: Assen Avramov. Sound: Pier-Yves Lavoué. Art Direction: Adrian Cristea, Maria Teresa Padula. Costumes: Sabrina Beretta, Angela Tomasicchio Cast: Edoardo Gabriellini (Ivo), Elena Radonicich (Clara), Piera Degli Esposti (Mrs. Nitti), Stefan Velniciuc (Ion), Ovanes Torosyan (Christian). Production: Mario Mazzarotto, Emanuele Nespeca (Movimento Film) with Rai Cinema. Co-production: Ada Solomon (Parada Film), Ivan Tonev (Ars Digital), Dimitar Nikolov (Kt Film and Media). Film of a recognized cultural interest. With the contribution of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Produced with the contribution of Apulia Film Commission. Developed with the contribution of the Media Program. Bari, a city caught in the relentless economic crisis. Ivo is an agronomist, but the lack of opportunities pushes him to accept a job in the fertile region of Banat, in Romania. Clara has just ended a relationship and is about to lose her job at the Bari harbor. Ivo and Clara meet by chance and seem to immediately understand each other. They spend only one night together before Ivo’s departure, but that is enough to create a bond and wanting to meet again. When Clara visit him in Romania, they fall in love. But is exile their only way to happiness? Between the streets of Bari and the wintery Romanian countryside of the Banat region. It is there that the inner and geographical displacement of the characters and places unfold, searching for identity. The pre-condition is that of the economic crisis, that force man and women to leave, to suspend their bond with their hometowns. Beyond this starting point, at the heart of Adriano Valerio’s film, is the description of a humanity searching for a new balance amid a painful relationship with memory. Valerio explores these issues (already tackled in his short film 37º4S, awarded in Cannes in 2013) with a sensitive and at the same time free and geometrical gaze, facing two seas, telling of a journey of departure and maybe of returning. A testimony of a forcefully stateless generation. Adriano Valerio, after completing his BA in Law at the Università Statale in Milan and attending Marco Bellocchio’s film workshop, moved to France. He teaches Film Analysis at the International Film School of Paris. Moreover, he collaborates with the Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts of Beirut, the Istituto Marangoni and the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris. In 2012 he founded the Camera Mundi association, which organizes film workshops in developing countries. In the same year, he attended the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Locarno Film Academy. His short 37°4S won a Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival (2013) and the David di Donatello Award for Best Italian Short (2014). Banat is his first full-length film.
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KALO POTHI (The Black Hen) Nepal-France-Germany, 2015, col., 86’ Director: Min Bahadur Bham. Screenplay: Min Bahadur Bham. Cinematography: Aziz Zhambakiyev. Editing: Nimesh Shrestha, Aziz Zhambakiyev. Music: Jason Kunwor. Sound: Bipon Stahpit. Art Direction: Menuka Rai. Costumes: Nanda Keshar Bham, Tara Khatri. Cast: Khadka Raj Nepali (Prakash), Sukra Raj Rokaya (Kiran), Jit Bahadur Malla (padre di Prakash), Hansha Khadka (sorella di Prakash). Production: Tsering Rhitar Sherpa (Mila Productions Pvt. Lrd). Coproduction: Debaki Rai (Shooney Films Pvt. Lrd), Catherine Dussart (CDP), Anna Katchko (Tandem Production), Anup Thapa, Min Bahadur Bham. The so-called civil war that tear apart Nepal for 10 years, from 1996 until 2006, opposing the army to Maoist revolutionaries, serves as the background for Prakash and Kiran, two boys very aware that coming from a different cast divides, but friendship and age unites. A white hen stolen from a wheat field becomes their hope. Breading it, Prakash believes to be able to gather money to allow Bijuli, his little sister, to study. But the hen will unexpectedly change hands and they will need wit to make her come back to its original owners. Hens are part of fairy tales imagery. A famous chicken is the one that made golden eggs. That farmyard clocking was also the verse that accompanied crowds of children in so many rural areas around the world. Similarly, claiming up the Nepalese mountains in those lost villages that bear a land rich of ancestral reminiscences, custodians of inauspicious tragedies, both natural and civil, there too, hens and children have their space to run around. Kiran and Prakash are very aware that coming from a different cast divides, but lighthearted childhood and a white and then black hen unites. Min Bahadur Bham places the losing and finding of people, animals, objects and nature in the ferocity of war, which neither the strength of religion nor the strength of myth manages to circumscribe. In this place, children have nothing else left but dream. Min Bahadur Bham is a young emerging director graduated in Nepali Literature, Filmmaking, Buddhist Philosophy and Political Science. His short film The Flute (2002) became a historical achievement being the first time a Nepali film was ever selected at the Venice International Film Festival. He participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus and attended the Asian Film Academy in the Busan International Film Festival in 2013 where he was awarded The Outstanding Fellow Award. Kalo pothi is his debut film and the first Nepali long-feature film presented in Venice.
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LIGHT YEARS United Kingdom, 2015, col., 90’ Director: Esther May Campbell. Screenplay: Esther May Campbell. Cinematography: Zac Nicholson. Editing: Chris Barwell. Music: Eric Chenaux. Sound: Robin Gerard. Art Direction: Jane Morton. Costumes: Maggie Chappelhow. Special Effects: Edd Maggs. Cast: Beth Orton (mother), Muhammet Uzuner (father), Zamiera Fuller (Rose), Sophie Burton (Ramona), James Stucky (Ewan). Production: Samm Haillay (Third Films), Duane Hopkins, Wendy Bevan Mogg. Executive Producer: Keith Griffiths (Illuminations Films). Co-production: Andrew McVicar. World sales: The Match Factory. Mum is in the hospice and 8-year-old Rose wants to visit. But nobody will take her. Ever. Moving like a ghost at dawn, her father disappears from the isolated house. Meanwhile sister Ramona waits for a boy who never comes and brother Ewan, anxious inside and online, communes with apparitions while the real world forgets him. But Rose reckons a family is like a constellation, all connected, even when actually they are light years away from each other. Imagination protects from pain. When we are young this is the golden rule that adult consciousness destroys. Nevertheless, that inner “child” can reappear; one has only to search for it in the lightness of a detail or a gaze. Light Years holds on to this. In its marvelous ambiguity of a phrase with double meaning, the ages of Rose, Ramona and Ewan are as “light” as well as “light years” distant from the loss of innocence. In this view, the five members of the film’s family become a constellation of immaginific unconsciousness that only the pure gaze of 8-year-old Rose is capable of aligning. Sublime, tender and characterized by a mature filmmaking, Light Years tackles the intimacy of a universality that no one can escape from. Esther May Campbell’s early work as the writer and director of shorts and music videos took her all over the world winning her acclaim and awards from the outset. In 2008 she wrote and directed September, funded by the UKFC, which won one Bafta Award for Outstanding Short Film as well as ten other international awards. This recognition brought her work on flagship Channel 4 drama Skins and in 2011 she went on to direct a feature-length episode of BBC1’s Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh, which attracted over 5 million viewers. She runs a community cinema project for children in Haiti and continues to construct visuals for Britain’s best underground musicians. Light Years is her debut feature film.
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MONTANHA Portugal-France, 2015, col., 88’ Director: João Salaviza. Screenplay: João Salaviza. Cinematography: Vasco Viana. Editing: Edgar Feldman, João Salaviza. Music: Norberto Lobo. Sound: Olivier Blanc. Art Direction: Nadia Henriques. Costumes: Margarida Ruas. Cast: David Mourato (David), Rodrigo Perdigão (Rafael), Cheyenne Domingues (Paulinha), Maria João Pinho (Monica). Production: Maria João Mayer (Filmes do tejo II), François d’Artemare (Les films de l’apres-midi). World sales: Pyramide International. A hot summer in Lisbon. David, 14, awaits the imminent death of his grandfather, but refuses to visit him, fearing this terrible loss. His mother, Mónica, spends her nights at the hospital. The void already left by his grandfather forces David to become the man of the house. He doesn’t feel ready to assume this new role, but without realizing it, the more he tries to avoid adulthood the more he gets close to it… Adolescence it’s like a mountain to be climbed that can sometimes become extremely steep. David, a fourteen-year-old boy, experiences it in just a few days. His growing up process is accelerated by his grandfather’s agony in the hospital and by a first love that disrupts his days. It’s the story of a young boy that is forced to grow older, who is tender and angry at the same time, someone who is capable of a disarming declaration of love. This film is a coming of age in the style of the best Portuguese cinema, underlined by the authorship of a debuting director who is already quite mature, who uses key passages from a summerish background, an amusement park, a motorbike rides or a dance floor in a sensitive and effective way. A debut film that almost manages to stop time in order to hold still that moment of passage. João Salaviza, born in Lisbon in 1984, graduated from ESTC – National Film and Theatre Academy of Lisbon and Universidad del Cine of Buenos Aires. His award-winning shorts were selected in more than a hundred film festivals all over the world. In particular, he directed a successful trilogy of shorts including Arena (Golden Palm for Best Short at Cannes 2009), Cerro negro (Rotterdam Film Festival 2012), and Rafa (Golden Bear for Best Short at the Berlinale 2012 and Award in memory of Ingmar Bergman at the Uppsala Film Festival). In 2012, the Centre Pompidou in Paris presented four of his films in a retrospective program. Montanha is his debut full-length film.
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THE RETURN Singapore, 2015, col., 80’ Director: Green Zeng. Screenplay: Green Zeng, June Chua. Cinematography: Wong Meng Fye. Editing: Green Zeng. Music: Richard Cooper. Sound: Takuya Katsu. Art Direction: Yeo Lee Nah. Costumes: Grace Wong. Cast: Chen Tianxiang (Lim Soon Wen), Vincent Tee (Tien), Tan Beng Chiak (Mei), Gary Tang (young Wen), Evelyn Wang (young Mei), Wong Kai Tow (Bee), Isaiah Lee (boy in white), Eugene Tan (doctor), Shan Rievan (son of Kamis). Production: June Chua (Mirtillo Films Pte Ltd). Wen is a political detainee who is released after many years of imprisonment. Arrested for being an alleged communist, he returns, an old man, to an uneasy reunion with his children. Wen also wanders through the city to see how his homeland transformed into a shining metropolis. He is philosophical about his long detainment without trial and is ready to move on. But as the past collides with the present, unforeseen circumstances force his journey to take a tragic turn. Returning home after being released from jail is such a recurrent theme in cinema that it almost became a genre of its own. Getting out of jail after almost half a century means discovering a world that has completely changed. The main character, Lim Soon Wen spent most of his life behind bars accused of communism; once he is out he re-encounters his son and daughter, abandoned as little children and now fully-grown adults. He observes and examines an insular city-state finding it hard to recognize. A well composed film, raw and touching, with an elegant direction style in its crucial moments. The traces left in the life of a human being are like stains of ink, those that underline turning points of big and small life events, that evoke and contains half a century of Singapore’s history. Green Zeng is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work encompasses film, visual arts, and theatre. He has directed many short films such as Blackboard Whiteshoes, which was selected in Cannes in 2006, and Passenger, which the same year was awarded the Encouragement Prize at the Akira Kurosawa Memorial Short Film Competition in Tokyo. He is currently the Creative Director of Singapore film production company Mirtillo Films, and has directed dramas for television and corporate videos. The Return is his first feature film.
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TANNA Australia-Vanuatu, 2015, col., 104’ Directors: Martin Butler and Bentley Dean. Screenplay: Bentley Dean, Martin Butler, John Collee in collaboration with the people of Yakel. Cinematography: Bentley Dean. Editing: Tania Michel Nehme. Music: Antony Partos. Sound: Emma Bortignon. Cast: Mungau Dain (Dain), Marie Wawa (Wawa), Marceline Rofit (Selin), Chief Charlie Kahla (Chief Charlie), Albi Nangia (Shaman), Lingai Kowia (Father), Dadwa Mungau (Grandmother), Linette Yowayin (Mother), Kapan Cook (Kapan Cook), Chief Mikum Tainakou (Imedin Chief). Production: Martin Butler, Bentley Dean, Carolyn Johnson (Contact Films). World Sales: Visit Films. In a traditional tribal society in the South Pacific, a young girl, Wawa, falls in love with her chief’s grandson, Dain. When an inter-tribal war escalates, Wawa is unknowingly bethroted as part of a peace deal. The young lovers run away, refusing her arranged fate. They must choose between their hearts and the future of the tribe, while the villagers must wrestle with preserving their traditional culture and adapting it to the increasing outside demands for individual freedom. “I can hear her, she is talking to me”. Selin is probably around 6 or 7 years old, with a straw skirt and a contagious smile. That “her” she mentions is the Yahul volcano that her tribe worships as a divinity. From the beginning of times, Yahul in Yakel, a village of the Tanna Island in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, emanates a law that no one dares to contradict. No one except two lovers: Selin’s sister and the grandson of the chief of the tribe. Constructed as a dance that transcends cinema genres, Tanna is a film about the essence of life and love that is ready to face anything in order to keep its integrity. If the Australian filmmakers' ethnographic research is exemplary, the result of their debut in fiction manages to distance ourselves from exoticism, in order to enter in the intimacy of a world that is much closer to us than we imagine. Martin Butler and Bentley Dean steeped in successful documentary-making have crossed over into directing drama. They film in an unobtrusive, intimate way with Bentley operating the camera and Martin recording sound. In 2009 they collaborated on Contact, which won the AFI award for best feature documentary, the Prime Minister’s History Prize, Best Feature Documentary at the Film Critic Circle of Australia and Best Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival. In 2013 they completed First Footprints, a landmark series on the ancient history of Australia, winning the Walkley Award, ATOM award and NSW Premier’s History Prize.
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JIA (The Family) Australia-China, 2015, col., 280’ Director: Liu Shumin. Screenplay: Liu Shumin. Cinematography: Liu Shumin. Editing: Liu Shumin. Art Direction: Lu Hong, Liu Xujun, Liu Shumin, Lue Feng. Sound: Wei He, Wendu’erhan. Cast: Deng Shoufang (Deng, the mother), Liu Lijie (Liu, the father), Liu Xiaomin (Xiaomin), Jiang Jiangsheng (Jiangsheng), Chen Erya (Pingping), Huang Liqin (Liqin), Liao Zepeng (Pengpeng), Liu Xujun (Xujun). Production: Shen Lijiang (Secular Films). Liu and Deng are a couple both in their 70s who have been married for nearly half a century and lived in a small inland city of China. The family of Liu and Deng is a typical ordinary family of China. The eldest daughter Liquin, divorced with a teenage son, lives with them. The second daughter Xiaomin and youngest son Xujun live in far away cities, married and with their own families. They are also too busy to visit their parents; therefore the old couple decide to travel a long way to visit them. It will be a special journey where they will do everything they can to keep the family tied together despite the distance, being the family their sole purpose in life. A 4 hour and 40 minutes long film that immediately fascinates. A family epic as simple as captivating, with an intimate, respectful and tender stride. A passionate chronicle of life’s details - smiles, pain, affections - uncovered step by step through the septuagenarian characters who travel through a new China, baring a mission both small and titanic: to visit their son and daughters, talk to them, support them. As witnesses of a rigorous style, we enter in this family with stealthily steps: we observe the old woman cooking meals, we listen to their confessions, remembrances, problems. Filmed in 35mm with an extraordinary cast of non-actors, Jia denotes an author that already in its debut does not fear to challenge himself with an exceptionally long, but necessary narrative, creating a cinematic gem perfectly achieved. Liu Shumin was born in a small inland town of China 41 years ago. After graduating in Physics from Tongji University in Shanghai, Liu went on to study filmmaking in the Beijing Film Academy. He moved to Australia in 2002. His documentary Yu Opera Performers was included in the Australian Center for Moving Image’s collection. He worked as a cinematographer for several films and commercials. From 2012 he started working on his debut film Jia, finished in 2015 after one year of shooting.
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Opening Film – Special Event Out of Competition
Saturnia Prize – SIC 30 Special Award ORPHANS United Kingdom, 1998, col., 95’ Director: Peter Mullan. Screenplay: Peter Mullan. Cinematography: Grant Scott Cameron. Editing: Colin Monie. Music: Craig Armstrong. Art Direction: Campbell Gordon. Costumes: Lynn Aitken. Cast: Gary Lewis (Thomas), Douglas Henshall (Michael), Rosemarie Stevenson (Sheila), Stephen McCole (John), Frank Gallagher (Tanga), Alex Norton (Hanson). Production: Frances Higson (Antonine Films/Green Bridge). Executive producer: Paddy Higson. World sales: Park Circus Limited. Mrs Flynn’s adult offspring – Thomas, Michael, Sheila, and John – gets together at the family house in Glasgow to mourn the death of their mother and prepare for her funeral. As a violent storm hits the city, the four siblings tear each other apart during a long dark night of events and misunderstandings. Hurt, angry, and confused, each member of the family has to come to terms with his own distress, in the course of 24 hours of meteorological and emotional storm. Peter Mullan is a remarkably cheerful man that directed a very sad debut film. Sad, but filled with strong and an almost outrageous vitality, that same vitality typical of the British working class, that often show their feelings and their own fragilities trough confrontation and violence. “With Orphans I wanted to explore a different side of pain” declared Mullan, “the most angry and vulnerable side of pain: the irrecoverable loss of both parents”. Filmed in an unseen Glasgow, if compared to how it was shown previously on the big screen, Orphans also wants to be a parable of Scotland in the 90s: abandoned, without parents, left to the mercy of free market, without any social security. Although intense and painful, Orphans doesn’t set aside an irresistible thread of humor, finding its best moments when, as Mullan says, “you don’t know whether to laugh or burst into tears” Peter Mullan was born in Glasgow in 1959. He starts acting at 10, becoming later a member of the Wildcat Theatre Company and an actor at the Glasgow Tron Theatre. He has acted in many important films such as Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff (1991) and My Name is Joe (1998) – winning a Golden Palm as Best Actor for this latter – Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting (1996), Mike Figgis’ Miss Julie (1999), Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur (2011), and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse (2011). He also acted in several tv series, including Top of the Lake (2013) and Olive Kitteridge (2014). As a director, he shot a number of shorts (including the award-winning Good Day for Bad Guys and Fridge) and three features: Orphans (Best Film at the Venice Critics’ Week in 1998), Magdalene (Golden Lion 2002), and Neds (Best Film at San Sebastian Film Festival 2010).
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Closing Film – Special Event Out of Competition
BAGNOLI JUNGLE Italy, 2015, col., 100’ Director: Antonio Capuano. Screenplay: Antonio Capuano. Cinematography: Antonio Capuano. Editing: Diego Liguori. Music: Federico Odling. Sound: Angelo D’Agata. Art Direction: Silvia Ajello. Costumes: Francesca Balzano. Cast: Antonio Casagrande (Antonio), Luigi Attrice (Giggino), Marco Grieco (Marco). Production: Antonio Capuano, Gennaro Fasolino, Dario Formisano (Eskimo). Executive Producer: Gennaro Fasolino. Co-production: Andrea De Liberato, Emanuele Moretti (Enjoy Movies). Bagnoli. Among the ruins of Ilva, the great factory of progress in the past and today a desolate indictment, Giggino, Antonio and Marco move, live and survive. Three generations that, throughout the three chapters, only occasionally cross paths. Three characters that one at a time encounter street musicians and house painters, nuns and gangsters, half naked or desperate housewives, fat shopkeepers and starving migrants. And also rappers, runaways, normal people at a protest… Without any order or sense. Only those who remain where history erased their paths will find themselves in a steppe, or in a desolate, contaminated and empty jungle. A land. Three characters representing three generations. Three chapters that blend into each other. A journey in the present and in the past that inextricably coexists in the scars left by time in the bodies of both people and Italsider’s buildings. This is what Antonio Capuano shows us in Bagnoli Jungle, done with a visionary and creative language that distinguish his cinema, a cinema that never reconciled since his debut Vito e gli altri (winner of Venice International Film Critics’ Week in 1991). The Neapolitan director owns a style that dares imperfection, that expands and contracts, that runs till the very last breath to then stay still. A style that in Bagnoli Jungle is both Giggino the runner as well as the “Italy statue” in the middle of garbage. An imperfect and sumptuous oeuvre, surreal and realist, experimental and political. Radically independent. Antonio Capuano Director, screenwriter, theater author, he started as an art director in Rai. He arrives to cinema in 1991 with Vito e gli altri (Vito and the others), best film among those presented at the Venice International Film Critics’ Week and Nastro d’Argento as best debut film. In 1997 Pianese Nunzio, 14 anni a maggio (Pianese Nunzio, Fourteen in May) with Patrizio Bentivoglio was in competition in Venice and won a David di Donatello. He also directed the episode Sofialorén in the collective film I vesuviani (The Vesuvians) (1997), Polvere di Napoli (1998), Luna Rossa (2001), La guerra di Mario (2005). Before Bagnoli Jungle he directed Giallo? (2009) and L’amore buio (2010).
