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2024
11.09 - 15.09.2024
The Villa Medici Film Festival took place from September 11 to 15, 2024 for its fourth edition! Since its creation in 2021, Villa Medici Film Festival has explored the links between cinema and contemporary art, setting out to discover new filmic writing. The fourth edition of the festival took place from September 11 to 15, 2024, and cultivates a pioneering spirit by encouraging encounters between plural works that question, disrupt, divert or re-enchant our relationship with images.
The Festival is divided into three sections: International Competition, Focus and Piazzale Evenings.
The festival highlights twelve films presented in competition, of various lengths and genres (documentary, fiction, essay), created in 2023-2024 by artists and filmmakers whose works stand out for their unique perspective or form. The screenings of the competitive films take place during the day, in the presence of the directors, in the Michel Piccoli cinema and in the Grand Salon of the Villa Medici.
Screenings marked with the symbol # will be followed by a Q&A session with the director.
FIDAI FILM, Kamal Aljafari (2024, Germany, Palestine, Qatar, Brazil, France, 78’)
Roman premiere
Investigating the looting of Palestinian films at the Palestine Research Center in Beirut in 1982, the film offers a counter-narrative of a story of ongoing appropriation.
Original Version: Arabic, Hebrew, English / Subtitles: English
· Reserve your session:
13.09.2024 – 14:00
14.09.2024 – 16:30 #
🔺 Trigger Warning
BOOMERANG, Maïder Fortuné (2024, France, 13’)
International premiere
The Canebière building, constructed by Fernand Pouillon on the eve of the Algerian War in Marseille, is seen as a body explored by the camera. The building comes alive with mixed sounds and voices, including that of James Baldwin.
Original Version: French
· Reserve your session:
12.09.2024 – 14:00 #
14.09.2024 – 18:00
DAUÑCUT (MOVING ALONG IMAGE), Adam Piron (2023, USA, 15’)
Italian premiere
In 2014, the director discovers a man in Ukraine with a tattoo of a relative dressed in traditional Native American attire. Through the editing of sequences filmed in search of this man, the film questions the consequences of losing control over an image and the circular irony of time.
Original Version: English, Kiowa
· Reserve your session:
12.09.2024 – 14:00
14.09.2024 – 18:00 #
È A QUESTO PUNTO CHE NASCE IL BISOGNO DI FARE STORIA, Constanze Ruhm (2024, Austria, Portugal, 96’)
Italian premiere
Questioning the work of Carla Lonzi, Italian feminist co-founder of Rivolta Femminile, this film takes us through a history of violence against women, paying tribute to women artists from the 17th century to the present day.
Original Version: German, Italian / Subtitles: English
· Reserve your session:
13.09.2024 – 15:30
14.09.2024 – 11:00 #
FAMILIAR TOUCH, Sarah Friedland (2024, USA, 90’)
Roman premiere
“Lion of the Future” award, 81st Venice Film Festival
A film about aging, Familiar Touch follows an octogenarian’s transition to assisted living, as she confronts her conflicted relationships with herself and her caregivers, through the oscillations of her memory, age identity, and desires.
Original Version: English / Subtitles: Italian
· Reserve your session:
13.09.2024 – 18:00 #
14.09.2024 – 11h00
HOW LOVE MOVES, Pallavi Paul (2023, India, 63’)
Italian premiere
The film is set in an Islamic cemetery in the heart of New Delhi, where the scars of pandemic and communal violence coexist alongside transcendental beauty. The grave digger, with his unconditional love for the deceased, opens our eyes to this world.
Original Version: Hindi, English / Subtitles: English
· Reserve your session:
13.09.2024 – 14:00
15.09.2024 – 15:00
MAN NUMBER 4, Miranda Pennell (2024, UK, 10’)
Italian premiere
Original Version: English
The confrontation with a disturbing photograph found on social media triggers a questioning of what it means to be a spectator.
· Reserve your session:
13.09.2024 – 14:00 #
15.09.2024 – 15:00
PEPE, Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias (2024, Dominican Republic, Namibia, Germany, France, 123’)
Roman premiere
Silver Bear, Best Director award at the 2024 Berlin Festival
A voice claiming to come from a hippopotamus. A voice that does not understand the structural perception of time. A voice that, from trance, traverses the languages of a historical event. “Is this my sound coming out of my mouth? Or, more precisely, what is a mouth?” The only thing he is sure of is that he is dead. The first and last hippopotamus killed in the Americas.
Original Version: Spanish, African, Mbukushu, German / Subtitles: English
· Reserve your session:
12.09.2024 – 16:00
15.09.2024 – 11:00#
REAL, Adele Tulli (2024, Italy, France, 90’)
Italian premiere
As human beings made of flesh, we now spend most of our time in a digital landscape, seeking happiness, wealth, relationships, knowledge, and experiences. What is reality today?
Original Version: German, Korean, Italian, English / Subtitles: English
· Reserve your session:
13.09.2024 – 18:00
15.09.2024 – 16:30 #
THE PERFECT SQUARE, Gernot Wieland (2024, Germany, Belgium, 8’)
Italian premiere
Wieland worked for twelve years with an animal trainer who taught birds to fly in circles and squares. The film analyzes how aesthetic norms can influence our (Western) worldview and why they lead to failure.
Original Version: English / Subtitles: English
· Reserve your session:
12.09.2024 – 14:00 #
14.09.2024 – 18:00
THE RETREAT, Gelare Khoshgozaran (2023, USA, UK, France, 22′)
Italian premiere
The Retreat is a processual film that explores the temporal, spatial, and relational effects generated by migration movements on the bodies and minds of exiles.
Original Version: English, Arabic, French, Spanish / Subtitles: English
· Reserve your session:
12.09.2024 – 14:00
14.09.2024 – 18:00 #
VIÊT AND NAM, Trương Minh Quý (2024, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, France, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, USA, 129’)
Italian premiere
Film presented in the “Un Certain Regard” selection at the 2024 Cannes Festival
Before leaving Vietnam in a container alongside future migrants, Nam, a young miner, seeks to find the remains of his father, a soldier killed during the civil war. But Việt, Nam’s lover, wishes to stay forever in the depths of the coal mine.
Original Version: Vietnamese / Subtitles: English
· Reserve your session:
12.09.2024 – 16:00 #
14.09.2024 – 14:00
3 carte blanches to the jury members: Clément Cogitore, Rasha Salti, and Vimala Pons
The carte blanches invite the public to enter the cinematic and artistic universe of jury members Clément Cogitore, Rasha Salti, and Vimala Pons during a unique session, featuring films selected from their own body of work, others that have inspired them, or those they wish to (re)discover with us.
– CARTES BLANCHE // CLÉMENT COGITORE
Artist filmmaker Clément Cogitore has proposed a dialogue between his documentary film, Braguino, and a short film shot on film by English artist Ben Rivers, Origin of the Species. This portrait of a singular septuagenarian living in an isolated area of Inverness County, accompanied only by Darwin and his theories, intertwines with that of a family that has chosen a secluded life in the forests of Siberia. It is about inventing autonomous ways of living, relationships to time, to others, to society kept at a distance, in favor of a certain understanding of nature, both magnificent and cruel.
BRAGUINO, Clément Cogitore (2017, France, Finland, 50’)
Original Version: Russian / Subtitles: English
Braguino is a cinematic journey in search of an “impossible community,” secluded in the heart of the Siberian forest. Between the fear of wild beasts, fire, and the joy offered by the vastness of the forest and its resources, children and adults try, with varying degrees of success, to live together.
ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, Ben Rivers (2008, UK, 16’)
Original Version: English / Not subtitled
The film portrays S., who has chosen to live away from society. Alone in his garden and surrounded by his machines, he continually questions life on Earth, from the origin of the world to an uncertain future.
· Reserve your session CARTES BLANCHE // CLÉMENT COGITORE:
14.09.2024 – 14:00
– CARTES BLANCHE // VIMALA PONS
To evoke her relationship with cinema and images, Vimala Pons proposes two films: an animated musical that is both burlesque and melancholic (Mon fardeau) and an essay film resembling a diary with hypnotic visual language (Heart of a Dog). Two introspective films of different designs that weave secret connections with animals at their center.
HEART OF A DOG, Laurie Anderson (2015, USA, France, 75’)
Original Version: English / Subtitles: Italian
Lolabelle, who passed away in 2011, was the dog of American artist and musician Laurie Anderson. A film-essay, a patchwork cinema that blends childhood memories, bedside notes, home movies, dreams, and tributes to those who inspired the artist-director.
MON FARDEAU, Niki Lindroth von Bahr (2017, Sweden, 14’)
Original Version: Subtitled in English
A dark musical takes place in a shopping center on the outskirts of a highway. The employees, embodied by animals, struggle against boredom and their existential anxieties through joyful musical performances. The apocalypse seems a tempting release.
· Reserve your session CARTES BLANCHE // VIMALA PONS:
14.09.2024 – 16:00
– CARTES BLANCHE // RASHA SALTI
Rasha Salti invites us to discover the film made by documentary filmmaker Ali Essafi: a unique and masterful tribute to the artists in resistance during the 1970s in Morocco, known as a period of struggles and collective dreams, an archival film that exhumes the intense creativity that this air of revolt managed to liberate from the violence of the regime.
AVANT LE DÉCLIN DU JOUR, Ali Essafi (2020, Morocco, 70’)
Original Version: Arabic, French / Subtitles: French
Avant le déclin du jour is an archival cinematic project that reveals the artistic creativity of 1970s Morocco, supported by the narratives of victims of the repression of this period, known as the “Years of Lead.”
· Reserve your session CARTES BLANCHE // RASHA SALTI:
15.09.2024 – 14:30
– CONTRECHAMP // GALB’ECHAOUF – BORJ EL MECHKOUK – APIYEMIYEKÎ?
It is difficult to make landscapes speak, to make them convey their history—not the geological one, but the one marked by humans… It is also difficult to reveal traces, images, through cinema. Yet, this is the challenge that the three artist-filmmakers of this session have attempted to take on from the lands of a region of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil or the desert landscapes of the Sahara.
GALB’ECHAOUF, Abdessamad El Montassir (2021, Morocco, 19’)
Original Version: Hassaniya Arabic, Darija / Subtitles: English
Investigating an event that profoundly changed the Sahara landscape, Abdessamad El Montassir confronts the silence of previous generations, haunted by a history they cannot narrate.
BORJ EL MECHKOUK, Driss Aroussi (2023, France, Morocco, 32’)
Original Version: Moroccan Arabic dialect / Subtitles: English
From the work of a man on underground water galleries for irrigating crops in the desert region of Errachidia, Morocco, emerges a cinematic fable about the climate crisis.
APIYEMIYEKÎ?, Ana Vaz (2019, Brazil, France, 29’)
Original Version: Portuguese / Subtitles: English
Apiyemiyekî? is a portrait based on the archives of Egydio Schwade, a Brazilian philosopher and activist, consisting of over 3,000 drawings made by the Waimiri-Atroari, a native people of the Amazon, during the time of literacy in Brazil.
· Reserve your session CONTRECHAMP // GALB’ECHAOUF – BORJ EL MECHKOUK – APIYEMIYEKÎ?:
13.09.2024 – 16:00
– CONTRECHAMP // ÊTRE CHEVAL – UN PASSAGE D’EAU
Well beyond the ties to the animal presented by Être Cheval and Un Passage d’eau, the articulations between these two films unfold on a score based on the body, its treatments, care, or constraints, the relationships of hybridization between humans, animals, and the environment, and this under the modes of transformation, mutation, hybridization, domination… for a reflection on our desires and becoming.
ÊTRE CHEVAL, Jérôme Clément-Wilz (2015, France, 63’)
Original Version: French / Subtitles: English
Karen is an enthusiast of pony-play, a practice that involves transforming into a horse and being trained as such. Through this quest, Karen questions humanity itself, gender differences, and explores life, love, and nature.
UN PASSAGE D’EAU, Clovis Maillet & Louise Hervé (2014, France, 23’)
Original Version: French / Subtitles: English
Some marine creatures, like lobsters, may be immortal. Will humanity, in the future, be able to transform instead of aging? A hypothesis posed by a mysterious club of retirees in a seaside resort…
· Reserve your session CONTRECHAMP // ÊTRE CHEVAL – UN PASSAGE D’EAU:
12.09.2024 – 14:00
– CONTRECHAMP // WORLD/ANTIWORLD: ON SEEING DOUBLE
WORLD/ANTIWORLD: ON SEEING DOUBLE, Haig Aivazian (2024, 30’)
Original Version: English / Not subtitled
Performed lecture.
· Reserve your session CONTRECHAMP // WORLD/ANTIWORLD: ON SEEING DOUBLE:
14.09.2024 – 19:00
– Meeting with Alice Rohrwacher and JR
· Reserve your session:
12.09.2024 – 18:15
In parallel with the films screened during the day, festival-goers gather each evening on the Piazzale, in front of the historic façade of the Villa Médicis, for exceptional open-air screenings of recent films, including premieres and restored classics of cinema.
ALLÉGORIE CITADINE, Alice Rohrwacher and JR (2024, 21′)
Original Version: French / Subtitles: Italian
Roman premiere
Presented at the Venice Biennale 2024
In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato asks: what would happen if one of the prisoners managed to free himself from his chains and escape from the cave? What if this prisoner were Jay, a 7-year-old boy?
L’HISTOIRE DE SOULEYMANE, Boris Lojkine (2024, 93′)
Original Version: French / Subtitles: Italian
Italian premiere
Best Actor – Un Certain Regard, Jury Prize – Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival 2024
As he pedals through the streets of Paris delivering meals, Souleymane rehearses his story. In two days, he must attend his asylum interview, the key to obtaining legal documents. But Souleymane is not ready.
· Reserve your session
11.09.2024 – 21:00 #
Session with directors Alice Rohrwacher and JR in attendance.
PARIS, TEXAS, Wim Wenders (1984, 146′)
Original Version: English / Subtitles: Italian
Roman premiere of the restored version
“Cult Film”
After four years of disappearance, Travis reappears from the desert into the life of his brother Walt, who believed he was dead and has raised his son Hunter. Travis seeks to reconnect with his past and heads to Texas to find his wife, Jane.
· Reserve your session
12.09.2024 – 21:00
New film by Japanese director Kyoshi Kurosawa
CLOUD, Kyoshi Kurosawa (2024, 123′)
Original Version: Japanese / Subtitles: Italian
Roman premiere
Presented at the Venice Biennale 2024
Ryosuke Yoshii is an ordinary man who makes ends meet by selling things online. Gradually, he earns the resentment of those around him and must fight for his life.
· Reserve your session
13.09.2024 – 21:00
EAT THE NIGHT, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel (2024, 107′)
Original Version: French / Subtitles: English
Italian premiere
Presented at the Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival 2024
Special Mention at the Carbourg Festival 2024
Jury Prize and Student Jury Prize at the Nouvelles Vagues Festival, Biarritz
Critics’ Prize and Best Direction Prize at the Champs-Élysées Festival
Pablo and his sister Apolline are linked by their obsession with the video game Darknoon. When Pablo meets Night and introduces him to his small trafficking schemes, he distances himself from Apolline. As the end of the game approaches, his choices provoke the anger of a rival gang…
· Reserve your session
14.09.2024 – 21:00 #
Session with Jonathan Vinel and actor Erwan Kepoa Falé in attendance.
MARIA MONTESSORI – THE NEW WOMAN, Léa Todorov (2024, 99′)
Original Version: French, Italian / Subtitles: Italian
Italian premiere
In 1900 in Rome, Lili d’Alengy meets Maria Montessori, a doctor who develops a revolutionary learning method for children then labeled “deficient.” The destinies of these two women will intersect to write history.
· Reserve your session
15.09.2024 – 21:00 #
Session with actress Jasmine Trinca in attendance.
The jury will present two awards: the Prix Villa Médicis for Best Film and the Prix Spécial du Jury for a standout film that captured the jurors’ attention. These prizes, valued at €5,000 and €3,000 respectively, also grant filmmakers the opportunity for a residency at the Villa Medici.
“For its originality, its inventiveness, its ability to surprise us, to lose us and then find us again, for its incredible freedom that moved us as much as it stunned us, the jury awards the Villa Medici Prize for Best Film to Pepe, by Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias.”
“For its ingenious transformation of “proof images” into sites of reflection and empathy, for its restorative poetry, the jury awards a special mention to Miranda Pennell for her short film Man Number 4.”
“Because we come away from this film, as we do from all great works, with more questions than answers, the Jury Prize goes to Adele Tulli’s Real.”
“For the striking precision of its directorial talent and for its captivating presence, the jury awards a special mention to director Sarah Friedland and actress Kathleen Chalfant for the film Familiar Touch.”
Jury 2024 (Clément Cogitore, Vimala Pons, Rasha Salti)
The organizing committee of the Villa Medici Film Festival is composed of :
Albane Dumas is coordinator of the Villa Medici Film Festival
Lili Hinstin is a festival programmer and artistic director. In charge of cinema at Villa Medici between 2005 and 2009, she became programmer for the Cinéma du Réel festival from 2010 to 2013. Lili Hinstin then became artistic director of the Belfort Film Festival (2013-2018), then of the Locarno International Film Festival (2018-2020). She is currently Program Director of the Biarritz International Film Festival – Nouvelles Vagues.
Laurent Perreau is a writer and director for cinema and television, and also stages images for the Rencontres d’Arles.
Sam Stourdzé specializes in images and the relationship between art, photography and cinema. He has curated numerous exhibitions and written several reference works. Since 2020, he has been director of theFrench Academy in Rome – Villa Medici.
Véronique Terrier Hermann is a teacher and research program manager (Beaux-arts de Nantes, Institut pour la photographie, Lille). Her publications include Jeux sérieux, cinéma et art contemporains transforment l’essai, Head/Mamco, 2015.
With the kind collaboration of Mathilde Henrot for Piazzale programming.
Still È a questo punto che nasce il bisogno di fare storia, Constanze Rhum
Image A Fidai Film: © Kamal Aljafari Productions
Image Boomerang: © Maïder Fortuné
Image DAU:ÑCUT (MOVING ALONG IMAGE): © Adam Piron
mage E a questo punto che nasce il bisogno di fare storia : © Constanze Ruhm
Image Familiar Touch: © Sarah Friedland
Image How Love Moves : © Pallavi Paul
Image Man Number 4 : © Miranda Pennel
Image Pablito : © Monte y Culebra
Image Real : © Locarno FF, Adele Tulli
Image The Perfect Square : © Gernot Wieland
Image The Retreat © Gelare Khoshgozaran
Image Braguino : © Clément Cogitore
Image Origin of the species : © Ben Rivers
Image Avant le déclin du jour © Ali Essafi
Image Heart of a dog © Laurie Anderson
Image Mon Fardeau © New Europe Film Sales
Image APIYEMIYEKÎ? © Ana Vaz
Image BORJ EL MECHKOUK © Driss Aroussi
Image GALB’ECHAOUF © Abdessamad El Montassir
Image Être Cheval © Jérôme Clément-Wilz
Image Un passage d’eau © redshoes & I. I. I. I.
Image WORLD/ANTIWORLD: ON SEEING DOUBLE © Haig Aivazian
Image Allégorie citadine © Alice Rohrwacher et JR
Image L’histoire de Souleymane © Boris Lojkine
Image Paris, Texas © Wim Wenders
Image Cloud © Kyoshi Kuorosawa
Image Eat The Night © Caroline Poggi et Jonathan Vinel
Image Maria – Montessori, La Nouvelle Femme © Léa Todorov
Portrait of Clément Cogitore © Kenza Wadimoff
Portrait of Vimala Pons: © Rainer Erain
Portrait of Rasha Salti: © Christoph Terhechte
Portrait of Lili Hinstin: © Lucile Delzenne
Portrait of Julian Ross: © Merel Hegenbart Photography
Portrait of Valentine Umansky: © African Artists Foundation (AAF)
Portrait of Jean-Marc Zekri: © Jean-Marc Zekri
Festival Film © Margherita Nuti and Gori Claudia