– Gaspar Noé, Angela Schanelec, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel are just some of the guests attending the 44th Bellaria Film Festival, unspooling from 6-10 May
Providence and the Guitar by João Nicolau
The 44th edition of the Bellaria Film Festival will unspool between 6 and 10 May in Bellaria Igea Marina (Rimini). The opening film will be The Loneliest Man in Town by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, which was presented in competition in this year’s Berlinale and will soon be distributed in Italy by Wanted. Currently on the set of their new film in Rome, the two directors will be attending the festival to deliver a master class and will also be awarded the BFF44 Special Prize. “The work of this directorial duo, who have always worked between Italy and Austria, is a prime example of free and humanist cinema,” enthused artistic director Daniela Persico during the film’s presentation in Milan, “making huge films with small budgets and inventing new approaches for contemporary film, which is increasingly buffeted between new markets and production costs.”
German filmmaker Angela Schanelec will be a guest of honour at this year’s gathering, where My Wife Cries (in competition in Berlin) will see her continuing “her investigation into the unfathomable mysteries of the human heart”. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in formal terms, another guest, Gaspar Noé, will be in conversation with Romeo Castellucci – one of the most influential theatre directors and set designers in Italy – and will present his two most recent films, Climax and Vortex.
Bellaria is pressing on with its female focus by way of Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, which won its protagonist Sandra Hüller the Golden Bear for Best Performance at the latest Berlinale. “In an Italian film system where women are clearly in the minority, a space for young female professionals to come together and share – the Re-Sisters hub – has been created within the festival”, the artistic director explained.
The Casa Rossa International Competition, for its part, will see Italian premieres of five films on the festival circuit unfolding in the presence of their directors, namely Providence and the Guitar by João Nicolau, which opened the Rotterdam Film Festival; Forest High by Manon Coubia, which is set in a refuge in the northern Alps (awarded a special mention in Berlin’s Perspectives section); Tudor Cristian Jurgiu’s Romanian-Italian co-production On Our Own (screened in the Berlinale Forum), which sees a group of parentless teenagers becoming a family; artist Carlos Casas’ sensorial journey to the heart of a volcano in Krakatoa (which debuted in Rotterdam), and Nicolas Graux and Trương Minh Quý’s Hair, Paper, Water…, which follows an elderly Vietnamese woman and which scooped the Golden Leopard in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present Competition.
Battling it out for the Casa Rossa National Prize for first or second Italian works is the first-person documentary White Lies by Alba Zari, which was presented in Rotterdam; Waking Hours by Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini (screened in Venice’s Critics’ Week); A Year of School by Laura Samani (from Venice’s Orizzonti section); Orfeo by Virgilio Villoresi (screened out of competition in Venice), and The Last One for the Road by Francesco Sossai, which is nominated for 16 David di Donatello awards, while Valentina and Nicole Bertani’s Mosquitoes will show in an Event Screening.
The eight films in the Gabbiano Competition for contemporary independent cinema are The Lunch: A Letter to America by Gianluca Vassallo, End of Battle by Suranga D Katugampala, Totò Cannibale by Demetrio Giacomelli, L’operaio by Tommaso Donati, Objet d’énigme by Chiara Caterina, Torneranno i lupi by Bianca Vallino, Come ci si sente a esser un pipistrello by Enrico Zanetti and Ilaria Calcinari Ansidei, and Cosa rimane quando il mare si muove by Gaetano Crivaro.
Last but not least, the festival’s closing day will revolve around premieres of two Italian films: La bolla delle acque matte by Anna Di Francisca, which is hitting cinemas on 11 May via Incipit Film in collaboration with Kio Film, and Con la pioggia dentro by Matteo Berruto, which will begin its tour of Italian movie theatres with help from Open DDB.
(Translated from Italian)
