Feature films in competition

There are ten first Italian works in competition this year in the Nuove Impronte section of ShorTS International Film Festival of Trieste, taking place between the 2nd and 10th of July at Cinema Ariston: feature films, created by very talented Italian directors who are yet to have gained recognition, which have not found a distributor or of which only a few copies were released.

Deciding the prize for the best film will be the Giuria Opere Prime (Jury of First Works), which includes film producer Francesca Cima from Sacile. But the viewers will also be invitated to express their preferences, awarding the most apprectiated film with the Premio del Pubblico Bakel. Recognition will also go to the best actor and actress from the competing films.

Through the Nuove Impronte section, Maremetraggio wants to emphasise an aspect which is unedited and  little known in Italian cinematography. Emerging directors who, after short films are now testing themselves for the first time in the creation of a feature film. Authors who are independent, experimental, bold, or maybe already able, from their debut work, to think big thanks to ambitious, international coproductions. This does not offer an exhaustive panorama, but certainly is an indication of the present and future of Italian film. “This year,” explains Beatrice Fiorentino, film critic and head of the section, “we have sought above all to seize promising signs, researching proof of vitality of a cinema that, despite difficulties, is still able to reflect the present day and express itself through an untested process of storytelling”.

Thus competing we have films such as “Medeas” by Andrea Pallaoro, a director from Trento who relocated to the States: Medeas is a modern take and fascinating revisit of the classic myth of Medea, presented for the first time at the Biennale in Venice in the Orizzonti section in 2013 together with  “Cloro” by Lamberto Sanfelice, presented at the Berlinale in the Generation section and at the Sundance Film Festival 2015, in which the 17 year old protagonist is played by Sara Serraiocco, also the lead in Salvo by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza and “Perfidia” by Bonifacio Angius, which competed in Locarno 2014. They offer a route of study that traverses the idea of family, of jail, obession, desire and repression.

The comedies –  “Short Skin” by Duccio Chiarini, amongst the Golden Ciaks of 2015, and “The Repairman” by Paolo Mitton, from 2013, presented in the Festa Mobile section of the 31st Turin Film Festival, at the Raindance Film Festival and at the Festival of Shanghai, starting however a fresh and non conventional look that abbandoned the stereotypes of Italian comedy, in which the characters do not hide their fragility, from a bitter aftertaste, like in the best traditional Commedia Italiana, when a smile makes you reflect. In competition there is also “Abacuc” by Luca Ferri, shown at the 2014 Turin Film Festical and “I resti di Bisanzio” by Carlo Michele Schirinzi, featured in the Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro 2014, an avant-garde film, that shows that in Italia there are still people who want to be unconventional.

There is also “Fantasticherie di un passeggiatore solitario” by Paolo Gaudio, that won the Grand Prix du Festival at La Semaine du Cinema Fantastique 2014 in Boston and that mixes live action and animation to form a immersive and surreal atmosphere. “Senza Nessuna Pietà” a detective film by Michele Alahaique with Pierfrancesco Favino, presented at the 2014 Venice Festival in the Orizzonti section, that could by the sign of a redeparture for a new period of Italian cinema. “Last Summer” by Leonardo Guerra Serragnoli, international coproduction from 2014 with a technical cast full of big names: from Oscar winning costume designer Michela Canonero to editor Monika Willi, alongside Austrian director Michael Haneke and Japonese actress Rinko Kikyuchi who has worked in Pacific Rim.

Ten unmissable titles for those who want to be introuduced to the new authors of Italian cinema.