ON THIS PAGE:
- Bye bye tiberiade by Lina Soualem
- Vampire humaniste by Ariane Louis-Seize
BYE BYE TIBÉRIADE (BYE BYE TIBERIAS) prima mondiale
Francia, Palestina, Belgio, Qatar, 2023. Director Lina Soualem. Cast Hiam Abbass. Running Time 82’.
Produzione: Beall Production
Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, who worked in films such as The Syrian Bride (2004), The Garden of Lemons (2008), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and series such as the extraordinary Succession (2018-2023), had left her native village in Palestine in her twenties to pursue her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her daughter, filmmaker Lina Soualem, returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother’s courageous choices, her exile, and how the women in the family influenced their lives. Bye Bye Tibériade brings together images from today, family footage from the 1990s and historical archives to portray four generations of bold Palestinian women who keep their history and heritage alive through the strength of bonds despite exile, dispossession and pain.
Oscar Cosulich
VAMPIRE HUMANISTE CHERCHE SUICIDAIRE CONSENTANT
France 2023. Dicretor Ariane Louis-Seize. Cast Sara Montpetit . Durata 92’.
The history of vampire cinema is full of troubled and contradictory figures. Still, from this 20th edition of Venice Days it will be good to add to the category the very young ‘humanist vampire in search of a consensual suicide’ played by Sara Montpetit (Falcon Lake) in Canadian Ariane Louis-Seize’s debut feature. An all too empathetic ‘undead’ who refuses to kill for nourishment is called upon to answer the director’s opening question, “What happens if vampires begin to reason about their own lives and the lives they take?” It is an ethical and philosophical, but above all, potentially tragicomic premise that subverts every genre rule and aims to exorcise the ‘anxiety of death confessed by the creator herself. At the expense of the two young protagonists: Sasha, as mentioned, in danger of her life when her exasperated parents decide to cut off her blood supply, and Paul, the lonely suicidal teenager ready to sacrifice himself to save her, provided he sees his last wishes fulfilled before daylight. Two subjects not at ease in this world, but from whose encounter, as the director says, “I wanted light and hope to emerge.”
Mattia Pasquini
