The programme
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The Festival is divided into three sections: the International Competition, the Focus and the Piazzale open-air screenings.
International Competition
The International Competition highlight fourteen films of all lengths and genres (documentary, fiction, essay) made in 2020 or 2021 by artists and filmmakers who propose a cinematic gesture representing a personal, alert and lively vision of the world.
International competition line-up:
AMANSA TIAFI (PUBLIC TOILET AFRICA) by Kofi Ofosu-Yeboah (2021, Ghana, 95’)
Italian premiere
Ama returns to the city, where she was gifted to a white art collector as a child, to reclaim her stolen childhood with the support of an ex-lover.
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ASSOCIATIONS by Ed Fornieles (2021, United Kingdom, 39’)
World premiere
The filmmaker’s subconscious is mapped out in a chain of seemingly never-ending images, as we hear the filmmaker allowing his mind to wander in a trance-like state where memories, thoughts and feelings rise and pass away.
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BETWEEN THE HEAVENS AND ME by Alfredo Jaar (2020, United Sates, 25’)
World premiere
Between the Heavens and Me is an intimate diary filmed under lockdown in the first months of Covid-19 in New York.
Trailer
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EL GRAN MOVIMIENTO by Kiro Russo (2021, Bolivia, France, Qatar, Switzerland, 85’) Roman premiere
After a seven-day walk with his companions, young Elder arrives in La Paz seeking to be reinstated in his work at the mine. The big city is overwhelming, and Elder begins to feel sick.
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GRAVEYARD CONNEXION by Jonathan Pêpe (2020, France, 11’)
Italian premiere
It is said that in five years’ time, Facebook will have more dead than alive. Are data centres destined to become memorials, storing the residual files of the dead?
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IL BUCO by Michelangelo Frammartino (2021, Italy, France, Germany, 93’)
Roman premiere
August 1961: young speleologists explore Europe’s deepest cave in the untouched Calabrian hinterland: the Bifurto Abyss. Trailer
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INSIDE THE RED BRICK WALL by the collective Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers (2020, Hong Kong, 88’)
Italian premiere
November 2019: the Fight For Freedom Movement in Hong Kong took up the Polytechnic University as their base. With the police blocking all exit routes, it was placed under siege. Trailer
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LÈV LA TÈT DANN FÉNWAR by Érika Étangsalé (2021, France, 51’)
International premiere
Jean-René is a retired workman who has lived in Mâcon, France, since emigrating from Reunion Island at the age of 17. Today, for the first time ever, the quiet man recounts his story to his daughter.
Trailer
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THE LOST DOG by Amie Barouh (2021, France, 13’48)
World premiere
A dog is lost in the Gare du Nord district. He passes from hand to hand discovering the contradictions of the neighborhood.
Trailer
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PETIT AMI PARFAIT by Kaori Kinoshita and Alain Della Negra (2021, France, 88‘)
World premiere
In Japan, three adults fall under the spell of Rinko, a high school girl in the video game LovePlus. This virtual idyll leads them for a whole weekend in the old seaside city of Atami.
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REPÚBLICA by Grace Passô (2020, Brazil, 15’30)
Italian premiere
The pandemic brandishes the extent of the necro-politics operating in the country and its society goes through a crisis of ethics amidst a government, as an expression of colonialist power.
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THE FOULED COMPASS by Madison Bycroft (2020, Australia, France, 24’)
World premiere
Taking its name from an Adrienne Rich’s 1973 poem, the film takes floating as its point of departure and a methodology of disorientation and a practice of pleasure.
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THE WORKS AND DAYS (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) by C.W. Winter and Anders Edström (2020, United States, Sweden, Japan, United Kingdom, 480’)
Italian premiere
The film is a geographic description of the work and non-work of a farmer: a portrait, over five seasons, of a family, a terrain, a sound space, and of duration itself. Trailer
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VAS-TU RENONCER ? by Pascale Bodet (2021, France, 72’)
International premiere
Paris, first third of the 21st century. Édouard is a painter, Charles a poet. They are friends, but discouragement lurks in the face of adversity. Gulcan, a stranger, appears from nowhere. An idea comes to him.
Focus
The Focus section present out-of-competition films and performance highlights inviting the public to explore unique cinematographic genres. It also provide an opportunity to share special moments with the members of the jury: Béla Tarr take part in a masterclass, led by journalist Cristina Piccino. Teresa Castro bring together three rare films by two South American directors: the work of Cecilia Vicuña, (What is Poetry to You?, 1980) and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (La Cueva Negra, 2012 and Black Beach / Horse Camp / The Dead / Forces, 2016) are put into dialogue for their eco-feminist commitment, which manifests itself cinematically in a desire to shift attention, to take care of wounded places and broken stories.
Visual artist Alexis Guillier present a performance entitled La réalité éclatée / A many splattered thing produced at Villa Medici. This performance tells the story of a series of filming accidents, notably from Italian cinema, and explore the paradox they express: both a founding and essential ingredient of cinematic illusion, the accident in cinema is also the unwelcome guest of a staged reality that we seek to control.
The Focus section also feature two films by artists, Aude Fourel and Evangelía Kranióti, Fellow residents at Villa Medici from September 2021. Pourquoi la mer rit-elle ? (2019) by filmmaker Aude Fourel questions, in dialogue with Katia Kameli‘s short film Ya Rayi (2017), the place of Algerian songs in the oral transmission of intimate, societal and political claims. Exotica, Erotica, Etc. (2015) by artist and director Evangelía Kranióti, alongside Suzanne Husky’s film Sur la prolifération des sirènes en temps de naufrage (2017), offers complementary narratives on contemporary maritime mythologies, between erotic odyssey and globalized trade.
Round tables and discussions complete these exploratory itineraries, with Isabelle and Jean-Conrad Lemaître, Edgar Morin, Olivier Père… so that this first edition of the Villa Medici Film Festival unfolds in a spirit of encounter, openness and conviviality.
Piazzale open-air screenings
Every evening, festivalgoers gather around the Piazzale (Villa Medici’s main courtyard) for a programme of recent films designed to bring together all audiences for unique screenings under the stars.
SERRE MOI FORT by Mathieu Amalric (2021, France, 97’)
It seems to be the story of a woman who left.
Trailer
In the presence of Mathieu Amalric
Screening organized in collaboration with Fondazione Cinema per Roma
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THE ORPHANAGE by Shahrbanoo Sadat (2019, Afghanistan, Germany, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, 90’)
In the late 1980s, 15-year-old Qodrat lives in the streets of Kabul and sells cinema tickets on the black market. One day the Police bring him to the Soviet orphanage.
In the presence of Shahrbanoo Sadat
Screening organized in collaboration with Fondazione Cinema per Roma and Rome City of Film – UNESCO
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DRIVE MY CAR by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi (2021, Japan, 179‘)
Yusuke Kafuku, still unable to fully cope with the loss of his wife Oto, receives an offer to direct a play at a theatre festival and drives to Hiroshima with his car. There, he meets Misaki, a reticent woman assigned to become his chauffeur.
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DRAMMA DELLA GELOSIA (TUTTI I PARTICOLARI IN CRONACA) by Ettore Scola (1970, Italy, Spain, 106’)
Oreste, a mature Roman bricklayer and convinced communist, meets and falls in love with Adelaide Ciafrocchi, a florist who has a stall at the Verano cemetery in Rome.
In the presence of Gianluca Farinelli (Cineteca di Bolgona)
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A CHIARA by Jonas Carpignano (2021, Italy, France, 98’)
In Calabria, a 15-year-old girl discovers that her father is affiliated with the ‘Ndrangheta and is involved in drug trafficking.
In the presence of Jonas Carpignano