Films on disappearance and searching, but without Italy
Three European, one Argentinean, one Canadian, one Taiwanese and a US film produced by Sting will vie for the award of the International Critics Week (SIC) at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival .
The National Union of Italian Film Critics, which organizes the SIC, proporrà the only Italian film as the special closing event. The Italian film that had been chosen for the competition section, L'aria salata (lit. “Salty Air”) by Alessandro Angelini, was withdrawn because it has not secured a distributor for September. A choice not condivisa by the SIC, which revealed that there will not be even one debut Italian films in the entire Venice festival.
The Critics Week will open with an homage to master filmmaker Otto Preminger, a restored print of Bunny Lake is Missing, a psycho-thriller of 1965. "Starting with Preminger’s film, about a mysterious kidnapping of a little girl in 1960s London, this year the SIC films are curiously united by the theme of disappearance and search", says Francesco Di Pace, general delegate of the section.
The search for a new identity drives the main character of French film Le pressentiment (lit. “Premonition”) by Jean-Pierre Darroussin to abandon his family, while in a village in Slesia, a young boy faces a mysterious threat in the Polish thriller-horror Hyena, elegantly directed by first-time filmmaker Grzegorz Lewandowski and supervised by Krzysztof Zanussi. The protagonist of Hungary’ Egyetleneim (My One and Onlies) by Gyula Nemes, on the other hand, is on the prowl for new encounters with women on the streets of Budapest, in a virtuosistico graduation film imbevuto dei sapori of the Hungarian nouvelle vague.
The non-European films are: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, by US director Dito Montiel, produced by British music star Sting and his wife Trudie Styler; Sur la trace d’Igor Rizzi (lit. Looking For Igor Rizzi) by Noël Mitrani (Canada); Yi Nian Zhi Chu/Do Over by Yu-Chieh Chieng, Taiwan; and El Amarillo by Argentina’s Sergio Mazza.
The closing film will be Italian title La rieducazione (lit. “The Re-Education”) directed by the Amanda Flor collective, made up of Davide Alfonsi, Alessandro Fusto, Denis Malagnino and Daniele Guerrini. Venato d'ironia, the film tells the story of a young graduate from the province of Rome who spends his days volunteering at the local church until his father sends him to work at a construction site. Shot in mini-DV, according to the collective, the film cost €500. "Beside the mini-DV cassettes, we had to pay for a lot of coffee and make a lot of phone calls to look for (non professional) actors who were continually disappearing".
The theme of disappearance seems to symbolically refer to the absence of new Italian cinema. "The new film law needs time", says Di Pace. "I hope that many talented young directors in circulation will soon have the possibility to best express themselves".
(Translated from Italian)
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