Press Release SIC 2013 (eng)

28. Settimana S Internazionale della Critica C di Venezia

Venice 28 August – 7 September 2013

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National Union of Italian Film Critics President: Franco Montini la Biennale di Venezia President: Paolo Baratta 70. Venice International Film Festival Director: Alberto Barbera

28. Venice International Film Critics’ Week 28 8 August – 7 September 2013

Selection Committee Francesco Di Pace (General ( Delegate) Nicola Falcinella Giuseppe Gariazzo Anna Maria Pasetti Luca Pellegrini

Programming Office Claudio Dondi Eddie Bertozzi Palazzo del Cinema – Lungomare Marconi 30126 Lido di Venezia Ph.: +39 041 2726679 - Fax: +39 041 2726520 sicvenezia@gmail.com - www.sicvenezia.it

Press Office Barbara Perversi barbara.perversi@gmail.com - ufficiostampasic@gmail.com Mob.: +39 347 9464485

SNCCI Administration Patrizia Piciacchia Via delle Alpi, 30 - 00198 Roma Ph.: +39 06 4824713 sncci.info@gmail.com – www.sncci.it Main Sponsor

28. Venice International Film Critics’ Week 28 August – 7 September 2013 The seven films in competition: L’Armée du salut (Salvation Army)

by Abdellah Taïa France France-Morocco, 2013 – World Premiere Återträffen (The Reunion)

by Anna Odell Sweden 2013 – World Premiere Sweden, Las s niñas Quispe (The Quispe Girls)

by Sebastián Sepúlveda Chile-France France-Argentina, 2013 – World Premiere Razredni sovražnik (Class Enemy)

by Rok Biček Slovenia, 2013 – World Premiere White Shadow

by Noaz Deshe Italy-Germany Germany-Tanzania, 2013 – World Premiere Zoran, il mio nipote scemo (Zoran, My Nephew the he Idiot) Idiot

by Matteo Oleotto Italy Italy-Slovenia, 2013 – World Premiere Surprise Film

Opening Film – Special Event Out of Competition L’arte della felicità (The Art of Happiness)

by Alessandro Rak Italy, 2013 - World Premiere Closing Film – Special Event Out of Competition Las analfabetas (Illiterate)

by Moisés Sepúlveda Ch hile, 2013 - International Premiere

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The seven films in competition at the 28. Venice International Film Critics’ Week are eligible for two awards:

1. RaroVideo Audience Award – 28. Venice International Film Critics’ Week The seven films in competition are eligible for the “RaroVideo “RaroVideo Audience Award” Award consisting of 5,000 Euro.

2. Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” Award for a Debut Film The seven films in competition as well as all the debut features presented in the competitive sections of the festival, are eligible for the “Lion “Lion of the Future – ‘Luigi De Laurentiis’ Award for a Debut Film”.

Film”. The prize, consisting of 100,000 USD, is offered by Aurelio lio and Luigi De Laurentiis’ Filmauro and will be equally divided between the director and the producer.

From this year on, FEDEORA – the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean – will award two collateral prizes to the films presented in the Venice Critics’ Week: one for the Best Film, and one for the Best Script, Best Cinematography, or Best Actor/Actress.

Once again this year, the Venice International Film Critics’ Week is supported by BNL – BNP Paribas Group, Group a bank traditionally committed to support Italian cinema and international film festivals.

Thanks to the Region of Veneto, Veneto, a programme of additional screenings of the films presented at the Venice Critics’ Week will be held in several cities of this area. With the support of the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano, the screenings will also be held in these two cities.

The Venice International Critics’ Week takes this opportunity to warmly thank Tiziana Rocca Comunicazione, Comunicazione Istituto Luce-Cinecittà, and Maserati for their valued support.

For the second year running, the Venice Critics’ Week is delighted to partner up with the multi-language language online radio FRED.

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28. Venice International Film Critics’ Week 28 August – 7 September 2013 la Biennale di Venezia and the National Union of Italian Film Critics present the line-up of the 28. Venice International Film Critics’ Week A selection of films can miraculously resemble a magic constellation: by looking at the starry sky of the 28. Venice International Film Critics’ Week, one can recognise a design connecting the nine selected films. These works seem to chase each other along shared path lines, presenting similar geographical, thematic and conceptual features as well as affinities between their characters.

However, it is not compulsory to find a constant in the stories, styles, or production efforts of these first-time time directors and the brave souls who have believed in them: the choice of the seven films in competition – eligible for the “RaroVideo Audience Award” – and d the two special events, was once again inspired by the will to discover fresh expressive energies in the world cinema landscape.. Our bet is to program films able to arouse interest and pleasure, pleasure bringing to the fore small works and young auteurs who need the visibility that only a section exclusively devoted to debut films and held within in a big festival f can guarantee.

The first point of this constellation is the Italian film in competition: Zoran, il mio nipote scemo (Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot)) by Matteo Oleotto. It is a delicate and smart comedy that, behind the mask of the ‘genre’, depicts existential drifts and crosses boundaries, even territorial one (the film is shot and produced between the north-eastern north region of Friuli and Slovenia). Paolo – superbly played by Giuseppe Battiston – is a man unable to love and to make long-range plans, one who combines his passion for wine to an insensibility towards friends and acquaintances.

One day he bumps into an unexpected inheritance: Zoran, a candid and almost almos autistic nephew whom he tries to quickly get rid of. However, this young man has a gift that Paolo is planning to exploit: he is a superlative master of darts. The relationship between the two characters will grow stronger between practical life experiences experiences and a newfound sensitivity and generosity.

The line that connects this film to Razredni sovražnik (Class Class Enemy) Enemy by Rok Biček is a geographical one, that is Slovenia. A new authoritarian teacher subverts the usual routine of a high-school school class, triggering tensions and conflicts. When one of the student commits suicide, her classmates accuse the teacher of being responsible for her death. But who is to be blamed and who instead deserves credit for attempting to understand these teenagers and their contradictory world? A dramatically intense film that deals with sensitive topics such as education and growth within the complex environment of the school.

The same dynamics between classmates can be found in the surprising Återträffen (The Reunion)

by Swedish performer artist Anna Odell. Divided into two parts, the first one stages a typical reunion of former classmates. This ‘festen’ soon soon turns into a psychodrama as Anna Odell, playing the main character, accuses the old mates of being responsible for having ruined her teen years by torturing and marginalising her. her. The second part presents, like in a documentary, the director’s attempt to show the film to her real classmates.. But what is real and what is fiction in this fascinating and absorbing conceptual experiment?

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The boundaries between reality and nd fiction lies at the core of our surprise film as well, a title that will be announced later.

Disconnection from reality and inability to face the change also for the three protagonists of the superb Chilean film produced by the Larraín Larraí brothers: Las niñas Quispe (The Quispe Girls) by Sebastián Sepúlveda. Isolated on a dry altiplano, three sisters breeds goats and produces cheese, obsessively repeating daily actions while remaining impenetrable to the echoes of a far yet real world. As the women feel that their way of living is under threat,, the story relentlessly brings them to a tragic end. A rigorous and masterful work, a film that will certainly be one of the biggest surprise at this year’s festival.

From a film in which the space is itself a character to another in which the sense of the space is symbiotically expressed by means of a brave and visionary style. Blending fiction and a quasiquasi documentary work with non-professional professional actors, White Shadow by Noaz Deshe portrays the cruel persecution against the albinos in Africa. Deshe – a stateless director born in Jaffa and living between Germany and the US – sets his story in Tanzania where the young Alias is looking for his place in the world after having witnessed the the murder of his father and the profanation of his body. A riveting journey at the protagonists’ protago side, an Italian-German German coproduction made possible also thanks to the support of a sensitive sensi actor such as Ryan Gosling, who serves as executive producer of the film.

Intolerance, although of a different kind, is the line leading to our last film in competition: L’Armée du salut (Salvation Salvation Army), Army debut feature by Moroccan novelist Abdellah Taïa. Adapted from Taïa’s ’s novel of the same name, name, the film is a touching and refined work recounting the life of the writer-director: director: from his teen years in Morocco – when he increases the awareness of his homosexuality within a complex domestic and social environment characterised by traditional values – to his escape to Europe thanks to a Swiss scholarship – an event that radically changes his perspectives.

Literature, language, and the value of art in all its different forms are the lines connecting the films in competition to the two special events. L’arte della felicità (The The Art of Happiness) Happiness by Alessandro Rak – the opening film of this year’s Venice Critics’ Week – is an animated feature made in Naples by young illustrators, cartoonists, musicians, and an enlightened producerproducer scriptwriter. A story blending lending spirituality, Buddhism, and soul searching with the wanderings of a taxi driver, a disappointed former musician who looks for his soul between memories and ghost-like like presences in a rainy Naples plagued by garbage.

The value of words and the importance importance of culture can be also found in our touching closing film, directed by another Chilean director: Las analfabetas (Illiterate) by Moisés Sepúlveda.

Sepúlveda Adapted from a theatrical piece played by the same actresses of the film (including the outstanding Paulina García, recently awarded in Berlin for Gloria), it tells the encounter between two women of different age and differently illiterate. The young Jackeline – illiterate of sentiments – takes to heart the real illiteracy of the solitary and stubborn Ximena. The former teaches reading and writing to the latter, but also helps her to finally look at her past and open up to the future.

Francesco Di Pace

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L’ARMÉE DU SALUT (Salvation Army) France-Morocco, 2013,, DCP, col., 84’

Director: Abdellah Taïa. Screenplay: Screenplay Abdellah Taïa. Cinematography: Agnès Agnè Godard. Editing: Françoise Tourmen. Sound: Fanny Martin. Cast: Said Mrini (young Abdellah), Abdellah Karim Ait M’hand (adult Abdellah), Amine Ennaji (Slimane). Production: Hugues Charbonneau, Marie Ange Ang Luciani (Les films de Pierre), Philippe Martin (Les ( films pelléas), ), Pauline Gygax, Max Karli (Rita ( Production), Frantz Richard (Ali Ali N’Films).

N’Films

In Casablanca, the young Abdellah spends his days at home, living a relationship of conflicts and complicity with his father. In the city streets, he has occasional sexual intercourses intercourse with men. During a holiday, his older and venerated brother Slimane abandons him. him Ten years later.

Abdellah lives with his Swiss lover, Jean. He leaves Morocco and goes to Geneva, where he decides to break up and to start a new life alone. He takes shelter in a house of the Salvation Army, where a Moroccan man sings a song of his idol Abdel Halim Hafez for him.

Adapted from his eponymous novel Salvation Army, Abdellah Taïa’s debut feature is surprising for its narrative and formal rarefaction. It describes, in four acts, the teen years and the early adulthood of a character who shapes his identity and homosexuality within a problematic social context. Taïa translates his experience rience in images (the protagonist has his same name), name) in a story in which silences, glances, embraces, and strokes, the suggested and the not-seen not are brought to the fore even more than the words. The same goes with the setting, which is rarefied and almost almos abstract. The ‘four acts’ of the film (in the family home; on the beach with his two brothers; ‘ten years later’ to sketch the relationship with Jean; in Geneva) constitutes four stages in the life of a young man who is determined to get rid of his past at any cost. Taïa abandons Abdellah up against a new beginning, while a Moroccan man sings a song for him: him the same song he was listening to in a film by Egyptian film master Henri Barakat. L’Armée du salut is a restrained melodrama that nonetheless conveys all the tenderness and fever of Arab cinema.

Abdellah Taïa, 39 years, rs, is the first Moroccan and Arab writer to have openly come out about his homosexuality. He is the author of novels translated into several languages, including Une mélancolie árabe (2008),, Le jour du roi (Prix de Flore 2010) e Infidèles (2010).

(2010) L’armée du salut, adapted from his eponymous novel, novel is his first full-length feature film.

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ÅTERTRÄFFEN (The Reunion) Sweden, 2013, DCP, col., 83’

Director: Anna Odell. Screenplay: Screenplay Anna Odell. Cinematography: Ragna Jorming. Editing: Kristin Grundström. Sound: Jan Alvemark, Martin Sandström.

Sandstr Cast: Anna Odell.

Odell Production: Mathilde Dedye (French Quarter Film). Coproduction: Gunnar Carlsson (SVT), Mikael Frisell (Dagsljus Film Equipment).

Swedish artist Anna Odell invites us to a grim class reunion with a twist. What happens when old hierarchies and truths are questioned from an unexpected voice? This film investigates how far, too far reality is. It traverses the border between fiction and reality with Odell playing the main character, using her own identity and life story to go into unspoken and invisible hierarchical structure. By processing the story in multiple layers, the complexity of power and exclusion is revealed and the dynamics of the group is exposed.

Let’s put it like this: the film you see is not the film that you will see. Anna Odell asks the audience for a certain emotional discipline and cinematic curiosity for this film of extreme psychological intelligence. Let’s start from the exemplary, beautiful ending: on a rooftop with her, we see other rooftops, and then tree-lined lined avenues and squares and buildings that are traces of the society, the city, and the nature. Within all this, a reunion reunion of former classmates takes place: they spent nine years together at school, and since then twenty years have now passed. Unpleasant experiences lay concealed. Anna herself states: “Something is not working with me, I would have avoided Anna Odell myself.” Why? Attention please: this time Festen and similar works are out of place. The Reunion is a collective confession taking on turbid responsibilities. At 37 minutes and 57 seconds from the beginning, Anna pushes us within another film. Everything that was before is not what it is afterwards. And she re-starts the game from a different perspective. tive. The chaos closing the section 1 is thus s investigated in section 2. Fiction F is needed to anaesthetise the sorrow, but not Anna’s truth. And the consequences that it brings along and within, within either.

Anna Odell was born in 1973 and is educated at two of the most highly valued institutions in Sweden: the University College lege of Arts, Craft and Design and the Royal Institute of Art. Unknown Woman was her final work of examination. It has been shown at various locations in Scandinavia and in Paris in May 2013. Återträffen is her debut feature and speculations about its content have already drawn substantial attention before the film’s presentation.

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LAS NIÑAS QUISPE (The The Quispe Girls) Girls Chile-France-Argentina, 2013, DCP, col., 83’ 83

Director: Sebastián Sepúlveda.. Screenplay: Sebastián Sepúlveda. Cinematography: Inti Briones. Editing:: Santiago Otheguy.

Otheguy Art Direction: Cristián Mayorga.

Mayorga Cast: Digna Quispe (Justa), Catalina Saavedra (Lucía), (Luc Francisca Gavilán (Luciana),, Alfredo Castro (Fernando).

Production: Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín (Fabula).

(Fabula) Coproduction roduction: Marc Irmer, Diego Urgoiti-Moinot Moinot (Dolce Vita Films).

Based on a true story occurred in 1974, this is the tale le of sisters Justa, Lucia, and Luciana Quispe, sheperds in the Chilean altiplano alt who lead a solitary life. A visitor brings news about a law that might change their way of living. This event forces the women to question their existence and relentlessly brings them to a tragic end.

The poor and dignified life of three sisters living in the northern Chilean mountains, breeding goats they know one by one. An isolated land, in which a timorous long-haired long haired fugitive transits and brings the voice of new laws enacted by Pinochet. The hard and patient work, the simplicity, the awareness, the resigned acceptance of their fate, fate which is as miserable as that of their father, a miner, or that of their sister Maria, Maria died during the icy winter. This small universe is suddenly overwhelmed by events happening far away and of which they can only perceive the echo. The women’s attempt to protect themselves, their ancestral spirituality, their growing fear. An essential and absorbing narrative. ative. Set within a majestic natural landscape, this film is an intimate drama and a western movie at the same time. Three women w who has given up everything, everything including love, but who decide not to give in to the dictatorship and the impending end of their world w by opposing a mad yet lucid action. A cinema of silence, few dialogues repeated like a litany, without music, with a relentlessly dramatic crescendo and an unforgettable ending. A mature, rigorous, outstanding debut.

Sebastián Sepúlveda, after eighteen years spent between Europe and South America, returns to Chile in 1990 to study History. He later studies Editing in San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba, and Screenplay at La Fémis in Paris.

Pari In addition to his work as screenwriter and editor, in i 2008 he directed the documentary El Arenal.

Arenal Las niñas Quispe is his directorial debut. debut

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RAZREDNI SOVRAŽNIK (Class Enemy) Enemy Slovenia, 2013, DCP, col., 112’

Director: Rok Biček. Screenplay: Screenplay Nejc Gazvoda, Rok Biček,, Janez Lapajne.

Lapajne Cinematography: Fabio Stoll. Editing: Janez Lapajne, Lapajne Rok Biček. Sound: Julij Zornik, Peter Žerovnik. Cast: Igor Samobor (Robert),, Nataša Barbara Gračner Gra (Zdenka), Tjaša Železnik (Saša), Maša Derganc (Nuša), Robert Prebil (Matiaž),, Voranc Boh (Luka), Jan Zupančič (Tadej),, Daša Cupevski (Sabina).

Production: Aiken Veronika Prosenc, Janez Lapajne (Triglav Film).

Film) World Sales: Sales Triglav Film.

Due to a huge difference in the way they perceive life, the relationship between the students and their new German language teacher becomes critically critically tense. When one of the students commits suicide, her classmates accuse the teacher of being responsible for her death. The realisation that things are not so black and white comes too late.

A film completely enclosed closed within a school that becomes a microcosm of society. The arrival of Professor Zupan – who replaces Nuša,, the German language teacher in maternity leave – destabilises a high-school class. Nuša was a sweet and sympathetic teacher, teacher while Zupan is strict, severe, straight-faced, ed, and his aim is to “create people”. pe The day after a harsh conversation with the teacher, one of the students, Sabina, commits suicide and her classmates accuse Zupan of being ng responsible for her death. The rebellion mounts till the day of reckoning, that includes also the parents. A perfectly accomplished film, presenting a flawless screenplay, outstanding actors, precise characterisations. A work about teenagers, their passions passions and contradictions, the grieving process, the loss. A metaphor taphor of contemporary Slovenia, unable to come to terms with itself, both rebellious against the authority and intolerant towards the difference. At the same time, ti this film is a reflection about the school, the educational models, the role of the educators, the family, and even Nazism and what this word means today. An absorbing and engaging debut, where no element is out of place.

Univers of Ljubljana, he Rok Biček is born in 1985 in Novo Mesto, Slovenia. A graduate of the University entered the cinema world as a prominent student at Janez Lapajne’s PoEtika, an occasional academy of film direction. His shorts – Življenje (Life, 2004), Družina (The The Family, Family 2007), Dan v Benetkah (Day in Venice,, 2008), Lov na race (Duck Hunting, 2010), Nevidni prah (Invisible Dust, 2010) – won several festival awards. Razredni sovražnik is his directorial feature debut.

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WHITE SHADOW Italy-Germany-Tanzania, Tanzania, 2013, DCP, col., 115’

Director: Noaz Deshe. Screenplay: Screenplay Noaz Deshe, James Masson. Cinematography: Cinematography Armin Dierolf, Noaz Deshe. Editing:: Xavier Box, Robin Hill, Noaz Deshe, Nico Launen.

Launen Music: James Masson, Noaz Deshe. Art Direction: Direction: Smith Kimaro, Deepesh Shapreiya. Costumes: Caren Miesenberger, Sandra Leutert. Sound: Sound Elie Chansa. Cast: Hamis Bazili (Alias), James Gayo (Kosmos), Glory Madgalena Cyril Mbaywayu (Antoinette),, Salum Abdallah (Salum), Tito David Ntanga (Father), Father), Riziki Ally (Mother), (Mother), James D. Salala (Adin), John Samuel Makipunda (Anulla).

(Anulla) Production: Asmara Films, Shadoworks, Mocajo Film. Producers: Ginevra Elkann, Noaz Deshe, Francesco Melzi d’Eril. Executive Producers: Producers: Ryan Gosling, Stefano Gallini-Durante.

Gallini Associate Producers:: Matteo Ceccarini, Eva Riccobono, Luigi De Vecchi, Vecchi, Depart Foundation, Foundation Andreas Hemmelsheim, Vanessa Ciszwevski, Babak Jalali. Coproduction:: Chromosom Filmproduktion, French Exit, Phantasma Film, Reel2Real. Coproducers: Alexander ander Wadouh, Mathias Luthardt.

Luthardt

Since 2008, albinos in Tanzania have become human targets. Witch doctors offer huge sums of cash for their body parts to be used in magic potions. From 2008 to 2010, more than 200 witchwitch doctor inspired murders occurred. As a local saying goes: “Albinos do not die, they just disappear.” This is the story of Alias, an a albino ino boy on the run. After his father’s murder, his mother sends him to the city. His uncle Kosmos, Kosmo a truck driver, takes care of him. him Alias learns fast in the city, selling sunglasses, DVDs, and mobile phones.. He is attracted to Antoinette, his uncle’s daughter, ghter, but her father totally disapproves. However, Alias will soon be noticed for the colour of his skin.

A cap, a black sheet on the head, long gloves for the hands. Covered from top to toe, Alias hides himself: in that part of the dark continent there is no room for white skin. His life has to turn into a white shadow. As a local saying goes, “Albinos do not die, they just disappear” in Tanzania, where here the murderous savagery against agai albinos still goes on.. A bloody and mysterious ritual ri between the contradictions of an intimately chaotic Africa. With hand-held hand held camera works, sound anxieties, light cuts breaking the eternal darkness, Noaz Deshe penetrates the Chaos of something he does not pretend to ‘understand’, but rather to ‘observe’. ‘observe’. Accordingly, he takes the fragmented fra point of view of Alias – a wandering shadow, the symptom of a disturbing diversity, diversi a human being with a strong will to live, the witness and potential victim of a non-sense non sense that he firmly tries to resist. White Shadow is an extraordinarily powerful debut.

Noaz Deshe is a Berlin- and Los Angeles-based Angeles based artist and filmmaker. He composed the soundtrack of Frontier Blues,, debut feature by Iranian director Babak Jalali. His debut graphic novel In Case We Never Meet is awaiting publication. White Shadow is his debut feature film.

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ZORAN, IL MIO NIPOTE SCEMO (Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot) Italiy-Slovenia, Slovenia, 2013, DCP, col., 103’ 103

Director: Matteo Oleotto. Screenplay: Screenplay Daniela Gambaro, Pierpaolo Piciarelli, Marco Pettenello, Matteo Oleotto. Cinematography: Cinematography Ferran Paredes Rubio. Editing: Giuseppe Trepiccione.

Trepiccione Music: Antonio Gramentieri per Sacri Cuori.

Cuori Sound: Emanuele Cicconi. Art Direction: Direction Vasja Kokeli, Anton Spacapan. Cast: Giuseppe Battiston (Paolo), Teco Celio (Gustino),, Rok Presnikar (Zoran), Marjuta Slamic (Stefania),, Roberto Citran (Alfio), Riccardo Maranzana (Ernesto), (Ernesto) Jan Cvitokovic (Jure), Ariella Reggio (Clara). Production: Production Igor Prinčič (Transmedia).. Executive Producer: Ognjen Dizdarevic. Coproduction roduction: Miha Cernec (Staragara), ), Arch Production.

Production World Sales: Slingshotfilms. Italian Distribution: Distribution Tucker Film.

Paolo, 40 years old, lives in a small Friulian town close to the north-eastern astern border. Unreliable and with a passion for good wine, he spends his days at the local tavern and stubbornly stalks his ex-wife. wife. One day, unexpectedly, he meets his nephew Zoran, an awkward 16-year-old 16 boy grown up in the Slovenian mountains. Reluctantly, Paolo has to take care of him, but he soon discovers Zoran’s bizarre arre gift: he is phenomenal master of darts. Paolo thinks this is the right chance to take revenge on the world. But will everything be so easy?

“Wine makes us happy, water is like a funeral; who leaves the Friulian wine is just the son of a dog.” Full-bodied odied Paolo Bressan knows it very ver well: he has put these lyrics into practice for all his life. In fact, he loves to drink, a lot. But his aunt Anja, just dead, has a surprise for him. It is called Zoran Spacapan, a nephew who looks idiotic, but that idiotic idiotic will not be. Matteo Oleotto depicts a lovely portrait of a Friulian community full of glasses, which are always full to sedate solitudes and disenchantments. In this Italo-Slovenian Italo Slovenian ‘trance de vie’, they drink, play, sing, look for something. And they run un away, too: from their lives, past, responsibilities, and even from love. The same goes for Paolo. In the meanwhile, meanwhile his Harry Potter-like nephew – without magic wand though – gradually sneaks in his daily drifts showing an innocence that is as awkward as a his proficiency of Italian language.. Oleotto draws inspiration inspiration from the choral polyphonies typical of his homeland to compose a rhapsody that first has the sour scent of must, and then the richness of a good red wine. In this liquid being of Paolo and Zoran, Zo everyone perceives the call of an inner landscape, along with a desire to live, to be, to smile.

Matteo Oleotto is born in Gorizia in 1977. In 2011 he graduates in Acting from the Civica Accademia d’Arte Drammatica “Nino Pepe” Pepe” of Udine and in 2008 in Film Direction at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. His shorts won awards all over the world. He worked as director for TV programmes and commercials. He served as coproducer, assistant director and actor in Alfredo Covelli’s Nonna si deve asciugare (Grandma Grandma Must Get Dry) Dry and was the coprotagonist of Claudio Cupellini’s Lezioni di cioccolato (Lessons Lessons in Chocolate).

Chocolate He is actually working on his second feature and, in his free time, works in the family vineyard.

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Opening Film – Special Event Out of Competition

L’ARTE DELLA FELICITÀ (The Art of Happiness) Happiness Italy, 2013, DCP, col., 82’ Director: Alessandro Rak. Screenplay: Screenplay Alessandro Rak,, Luciano Stella.

Stella Editing: Marino Guarnieri. Character design:: Alessandro Rak, Rak Dario Sansone. Music: Music Antonio Fresa, Luigi Scialdone. Sound:: Luigi Scialdone, Giancarlo Rutigliano, Stefano Grosso.

Grosso Dubbing: Leandro Amato (Sergio), Nando Paone (Alfredo), (Alfredo) Riccardo Polizzy Carbonelli (Radio speaker ), Renato Carpentieri (Uncle Luciano), Jun Ichikawa (Antonia), Lucio Allocca (Father Father of Sergio and Alfredo), Patrizia di Martino (Erika) . Production: Production Luciano Stella (Big Sur srl) in collaboration c with Mad Entertainment, Rai Cinema and Cinecittà Luce, Luce in association with Aleteia Communication and Romagnosi 2000 in accordance with the Tax Credit law. law Executive Producer: Producer Luciano Stella.

Italian Distribution: Istituto Luce Cinecittà.

Two brothers. Two continents. Two lives. One single soul. Under a gloomy sky, between apocalyptic premonitions in a Naples at its utmost decay, Sergio, a taxi driver, receives a shocking news. Nothing will be the same as before. Now Sergio looks himself in the mirror and what he sees is a forty-year-old old man who has turned his back on music and got lost in the limbo of his city. While a storm is raging outside, a crowd of memories, hopes, regrets and presences begins to populate his cab. Sooner or later the rain will stop and the sky will open up again. And the end will come. Or the music will be back.

“To live is just a perception and to die just a way of changing,” changing ” Alessandro Rak states in the director’s note of his surprising debut feature. But between the perception and the change, the life and the death, we are delighted to realise that the artistic experience of a group of young cartoonists, illustrators and musicians can be of the highest level also in a city as difficult as Naples, a place that is often considered in decay and where the culture is exposed to the apocalypse of decline. Another life is possible and another cinema is possible, too, if this animated film touches and astonishes the viewer, and take us to a world blending reality and fantasy, spirituality and metropolitan materiality, words and music. In a city hit by an incessant storm, covered by piles s of garbage, and exacerbating the heart and soul of whom still tries to oppose this fate, Sergio – a former pianist, now a taxi driver – is just looking for his soul. He has lost it when his life was filled with regrets, memories, delusions, and the wait for a return. The ghost-like ghost presences who animates his cab and an imaginary yet dreaded eruption of the Vesuvio, will possibly take him to the starting point of a new life.

Alessandro Rak is a Neapolitan olitan director and cartoonist. He is the artistic a director of the animated tv programme Il principe di Sansereno e il mistero dell’uovo di Virgilio (The Sansereno Prince and the Mystery ystery of Virgilio’s Egg), Egg produced by Rai Fiction. He directed several awardaward winning animated shorts, including Va’, Looking Death Window and Again.

Again He directed animated videoclips for 'O sciore e 'o viento by Foja, La paura dei Bisca and Kanzone su Londra by 24 grana. He is the author of comics such as A Skeleton Story, Bye bye jazz, jazz Zero or One and Ark. L’arte della felicità is his debut feature.

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Closing Film – Special Event Out of Competition

LAS ANALFABETAS (Illiterate) Chile, 2013, DCP, col., 73’

Director: Moisés Sepúlveda. Screenplay: Screenplay Pablo Paredes, Moisés Sepúlveda.

Sepúlveda Cinematography: Arnaldo Rodríguez. Editing: Rodrigo Fernández.

Fernández Music: Cristóbal bal Carvajal.

Carvajal Sound: Matías Valdés. Art Direction: Nicole Guzmán.

Guzmán Cast: Paulina García (Ximena), Valentina Muhr (Jackeline). Production: Fernando Bascuñán (Planta). Coproduction:: Florencia Larrea, Alicia Scherson (Kine Imagenes). World Sales: Sales Habanero Film Sales.

50-year-old Ximena has learned to live on her own to keep her illiteracy as a secret. 26-year-old Jackeline, an unemployed teacher, offers to read the news for her. The young woman soon tries to teach her reading, but this new task looks quite complicated. complicated. One day, Jackeline finds a letter that Ximena has been een keeping as her only treasure: a message her father had left before abandoning her many years before. Due to this mystery, stery, the two women embarks in a learning lea process in which the role of the teacher and that of the student will continuously reverse.

A woman and a universe of mysterious signs. She sees them everywhere: everywhere printed on books, newspapers, signposts. Even on walls, in red letters. She is aware to be among the few unable to decipher them, because she, Ximena, is illiterate. She decided to be like that and to follow an ‘alternative’ way of life made of images, sounds, sounds, smells, feelings, and solitude. Why does she expose herself with a young yet inexperienced literate then, to discover a truth that might hurt?

This is possibly the question that pushed young magician-filmmaker magician Moisés Sepúlveda Sep to explore the immaculate ate reign of these two differently magnificent women, whose exchange of knowledge grants them the chance of a new perspective on the world. A highly-acclaimed highly acclaimed theatrical piece by Pablo Paredes, Las analfabetas puts on stage the greatest existential themes translated with the levity of the comedy. The protagonists – the same of the theatrical version – are the young Valentina Muhr and Paulina García, García the Chilean diva who got the Best Actress Award at the last Berlin Film Festival for her role in Gloria.

Moisés Sepúlveda is born in Santiago in 1984. Graduated in Film Direction and Screenplay at the Arcis University of Santiago, he has simultaneously developed a career as professional magician, participating in several national and international congresses. He has written and directed music videos, shorts, and TV series. He is currently working on his second seco film, Sed, la historia detrás del fraude. Las analfabetas is his debut feature.

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