Competition 2022

Anaklia by Elisa Baccolo – 6’10’’ – Georgia/Italy 2022

Italian Preview

Anaklia, a newly built city overlooking the Black Sea, bordering Abkhazia (which formally declared independence in 1999), was to become one of Georgia’s main tourist resorts. However, the tourists who come here find themselves in a place that deviates from the imaginary of the city-resort.


In light by Alice Fassi – 7’36’ – Italy 2022


A tale of the teachings of the Universal White Brotherhood, of the annual ritual at the Seven Rila Lakes in Bulgaria to celebrate the new spiritual year and of Paneurhythmy, a dance made up of a series of movements linked to the cosmic rhythm. Between documentary and visual story, alternating archival material and new footage, we enter the life of a community devoted to light, born in Bulgaria at the beginning of the twentieth century.


Perpetual becoming by Bill Kinder – 9’50’’ – Usa 2022

Italian Preview

Can a film create a state of devotional meditation? “Hear the voice of being …” in the Sierra Nevada. An enchanting electronic score immerses the viewer on a journey of reverence. “They both listened in silence to water, which for them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of being, of perpetual becoming”. Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha


The face of a city by Farhad Pakdel – 10’57’’ – Canada 2021

Italian Preview

The stories of four Iranian families who emigrate to Canada and the city they leave behind. As the moment of departure approaches, the spaces of sociality are transformed into places of memory, starting to fade into the distance.


Akouchetame by Federico Francioni e Gaël De Fournas – 15’ – Italia 2021

Regional Preview

A narrator writes a letter in which he tells a story that is close to him: that of Latifa, a young woman who in losing her father Abdellaziz loses the world that has shaped her identity. The trajectory of the film is a fairy tale, the elaboration of a mourning; the fleeting impression of a world that is about to transform itself definitively.


It’s just another dragon by Taymour Boulos – 15’54’’ – Hungary 2021

Italian Preview

Upon arriving in Budapest from a declining Lebanon, a young filmmaker meets a Hungarian storyteller who was once forced to leave. Together they weave a layered visual story, each bringing their own stories and exchanging words. A film about traveling, and how stories can save us.


The sower of starsby Lois Patiño- 25’ – Spain 2022

Regional Preview

Distant lights reveal the outlines of a city, Tokyo. Illuminated ships cross the water with people asleep on board and the night seems to become liquid. The Star Sower wakes them up and travels with them around the city. They talk about this and that, and they say goodbye to everything.


Veil byIrene Felici – 43’31’’ – Italy 2021

Regional Preview

Veil is the story of a woman who chose to be a cloistered nun. The approach to a choice, the religious one, imposes “conventions” and “rules” of life in a time, such as today, where the physical and inner appearance seems to be the basis of everyday life, an appearance also regulated by unbridled use of new media.


Transhumances by Andrea Mura – 52’ – Italy 2021

Regional Preview

The film tells the great migration of Sardinian shepherds in Tuscany in the 1960s. A little-told Italian story of work, social conflicts and emancipation in the transition from sharecropping to industrialization. Transhumances is a choral story that is the discovery of the landscape, of the countryside, of an activity still deeply rooted in the practices of pastoralism grappling with the challenges of contemporaneity, but also the story of men, of transhumance and of communities that reconstitute themselves despite the sea.


The Upland Sergeant – Mario Rigoni Stern’s Story by Tommaso Brugin, Federico Massa – 52’ – Italy 2022

Regional Preview

A journey between present and past, rich in testimonies and reflections, to tell the story of the writer Mario Rigoni Stern (1921-2008). During an imaginary day, from dawn to the starry night, his voice, taken from an extensive archive, recalls the years of war and imprisonment. The Sergeant of the Alpine troops, having returned home, over time became the Guardian of the Asiago plateau, and his homeland assumes the value of a world to be preserved against wars and indifference.


Where the roe deer swim by Maria Conte – 58’30’’ – Italy 2021

Regional Preview

The waters of Cadore tell different stories: they have inspired ancient cults and popular legends, they have shaped the landscape, the life of the communities and the economy of the area. From the mid-twentieth century the history of the hydroelectric industry becomes dominant: the sacrifice of the Piave-Boite-Vajont river is necessary for the modernization of the country, according to a project that will be both strategic and dramatic.


Song of the wind by Soudabeh Beizaei – 60’05’’ – Iran 2022

European Preview

The documentary tells the story of Pegah, a young Iranian music lover who lives in a society that imposes numerous restrictions on women, to whom she does not yield.
Pursuing his artistic and musical dreams, Pegah meets Master Taher Yarveisy, one of the players of the tanbur, a traditional instrument with which sacred songs are performed, who lives in a northern city of Iran, Gouran. Pegah has the opportunity to live with the Master for a while to learn the tanbur, and becomes the narrator of the Master’s last days of life.


The Children of the Sleeping Giant by Lorenzo Pallotta – 70’ – Italy 2021


Few people remain in the mountain village of Intermesoli. The young Simone, the unspoken heir of memories and ancient traditions, takes on the responsibilities of the town. Not far away lives Filippo, a hermit and individualist, who, far from everyone, tries to rebuild himself and his faith.
Simone and Filippo, bound by oppressive silences, come to terms with internal limitations and compromises under the watchful gaze of a people who, unwittingly, overwhelm their life and their destiny.


Amuka by Antonio Spanò – 71’ – Belgium 2021


The Democratic Republic of the Congo could feed almost one out of two people on earth, yet one out of six Congolese suffers from hunger, despite the fact that agriculture in that country involves 70% of the population. Faced with this paradox, the peasants group into agricultural cooperatives. Some of them share their daily life, that one of all those they represent: even if they do not know each other, they live thousands of kilometers from each other and are involved in different agricultural sectors, their voices sound compact.


La moda del liscio by Alessandra Stefani – 71’- Italy 2021


The moments of the last day of glory of an old crooner, champion of the “Liscio Romagnolo”, become the choral story of large and small characters of this genre, poised between decadence and the desire to survive. Eccentric, visionary, authentic and a little crazy: they created the imagination of a place and a people who never stopped singing and dancing.


Silencio en la ribera by Igor Galuk – 72’ – Argentina 2022

Regional Preview

The last chronicle of the Argentinian writer Haroldo Conti on the ghostly island of Paulino de Berisso, published in April 1976, a month before his kidnapping and disappearance. The documentary revives that chronicle on the Argentinian island and retrieves film material, establishing a link with the present of the place.


A Tale of Grafting by Sandro Bozzolo – 78’ – Italy 2022

Regional Preview

The story of a silent but formidable battle to recover the centuries-old chestnut groves and their tradition. In the Piemontese village of Viola Castello only the ‘castagnere’, old harvester women, remained. Their memory recalls a past where life revolved around chestnut trees, a legacy that has now almost completely disappeared. Ettore, filmed by his son Sandro, changes the destiny of the valley through grafting: he gives the existing plants new life, changing a story that seemed already over. Grafting is also human: the valley is repopulated, a new future for the new generations. Through a tradition that has never disappeared, grafting brings the chestnut groves of Viola Castello back to life.


The yellow queen – A road movie by Lucio Arisci – 87’ – Belgium 2021


From Cologne to the capital of Mali, Bamako, 4.475 miles aboard a yellow bus, on the routes of an unexpected solidarity, underground and semi-clandestine trade. A road movie through which (re)discovering Africa and its contradictions, but also broadening the horizons of us Western citizens towards a broader and more sustainable vision of the consumer society.


Nowhere people by Zhandong Ma – 253′ – China 2022

Italian Premiere – o.v. with english subtitles

A colossal documentary shot between 2005 and 2020 that returns images and living conditions of the Golden Triangle. During the land reform and Cultural Revolution in China, many people fled to these lands, which became the largest gathering place in the region for people of Han nationality. A place of the marginalized, an “enclave” without identity. The story of the generational cycle of “drugs”, the difficulties of the people in a place where survival is the only goal for the people who live there.