OCEANS ARE THE REAL CONTINENTS
World première – Competition
Italy/Cuba, 2023 – Directed by Tommaso Santambrogio With Alexander Diego, Edith Ybarra Clara, Frank Ernesto Lam, Alain Alain Alfonso González, Milagros Llanes Martínez Runtime 1h e 59’ Distribution Fandango Distribuzione
“I wanted the place to somehow emerge as a character,” says Tommaso Santambrogio about his debut feature, Oceans Are the Real Continents (Los océanos son los verdaderos continentes), which opens the International Competition of the 20th Venice Days. It is an unusual journey for Italian cinema in a melancholy Cuba burdened by the U.S. embargo and mass emigration. Santambrogio uses black and white and depth of field to bring to mind the Golden Lion winner Lav Diaz (with whom he worked), lingering on some of the San Antonio de los Baños inhabitants. An older woman rereads old letters from her combatant husband in Angola. Two young boys who dream of becoming baseball players in the U.S. A couple of theatre artists. “I spent much time with the characters,” Santambrogio explains, “drawing inspiration from their past, from their everyday life, and based on that, I kept writing, and then once I got to the set, there was maximum freedom to act.”
THE SUN WILL RISE
World première – Out of Competition
France/Iran, 2023 – Director Ayat Najafi Runtime 1h e 25’ Co-production: Wattson With support of Art and Human Rights, Amnesty International Italia
This 20th edition of the Venice Days offers critical looks at various historical places and moments. It’s not by chance that it is dedicated to two great truth-seekers, film director Citto Maselli and investigative journalist Andrea Purgatori, respectively co-founder and former president of the autonomous and parallel section of the Venice Film Festival. Ayat Najafi’s The Sun Will Rise (Aftab mishavad), set in Tehran in October 2022, tells us about Iran at the time of the recent uprising against the misogynist regime of the ayatollahs. A staging of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (the play in which the women of Athens conquer the Acropolis) is interrupted by nearby clashes between protesters and riot forces. Some of the thespians would like to hide, others, led by the lead actress, take to the streets to fight alongside the people. They all agree on one thing: the play, in times of revolution, cannot continue. Before this film, the director and documentary filmmaker directed Move It, Football Under Cover, No Land’s Song, and Nothing Happened Here.
Nina dei Lupi opens the Special Screenings of the Venice Days
The Special Screening of Antonio Pisu‘s dystopian thriller Nina dei Lupi opened the 20th edition of the Venice Days. Based on the homonymous novel by Alessandro Bertante, the film is set in a world where a solar storm has rendered electronic devices useless. The cast includes Sergio Rubini, Sara Ciocca, Sandra Ceccarelli, Cesare Bocci and Davide Silvestri. On August 31, there will be a tribute to Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallée, who died in 2021, with the screening of the 4K restoration of his C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005). Cinema and literature is the topic of the section Conversations with the Authors, opened on August 29 by Duccio Chiarini’s “Italo Calvino, lo scrittore sugli alberi”, about the work of the great writer on the centenary of his birth. On the other hand, Angelo Bozzolini’s Parola ai giovani (September 1) follows up on Andrea Camilleri’s call for the need to findfind a new “humanism of the word” that starts with young people. In Yuri Ancarani’s Il popolo delle donne (September 3), the voice of the convicted journalist, activist and psychoanalyst Marina Valcarenghi retraces courtroom testimonies, theoretical discourses and field experiences in what is (also) a restless reflection on the relationship between male and female.
