LASSU’

(Up there)
80 minutes, 2022
Director : Bartolomeo PAMPALONI (Italy)
Production : Aeternam Films (France), Graffiti Doc (Italy)

At the top of the mountain overlooking Palermo stands a building decorated entirely with naive mosaics. It is an abandoned observatory, which for more than twenty years has been the home of Nino, alias Isravele, a former mason from the Brancaccio district who lives up there alone, on the fringes of the world. Day after day he devotes himself body and soul to this enormous, almost inhuman project: but now that it’s almost complete, visitors are increasingly threatening his tranquility.

With a philosophy degree from Florence university, Bartolomeo PAMPALONI studied Arts and Theatre at the University of Paris 8. At the same time he made his first short films and began working on film and television sets. As a student director at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the National School of Italian Cinema, he wrote and directed several short films and a documentary. His first documentary feature, Roma Termini, won the Special Jury Mention at the Rome Film Festival 2014 and was selected for the Raindance Film Festival 2015.

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MEMENTO

78 minutes, 2021
Director : Nikos ZIOGAS (Greece)
Production : Boo Productions (Greece)

Memento is a lyrical documentary about Epirus, the Balkan region shared between Greece and Albania. An elegy to the Epirus which is dying, but also to the Epirus which lives on. A love song for those who stayed, for those who migrated, for its musicians and its unique nature. The film takes us on a journey to Giromeri in Thesprotia to discover the daily life of this small village during its Easter celebrations, in search of its roots and a very particular custom. Through songs, the few inhabitants left in the village try to keep traditions and legends alive, and to ensure the continuity of life – even when it comes to an end.

Nikos ZIOGAS was born in 1986 in Florina, Greece. He has worked as a DoP on numerous film and television productions. In 2018, he directed the short film Spring (10′), which had its world premiere at the 21st Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival. He has worked on several projects about people living on the margins of society – the homeless, refugees, migrants. In recent years he has mostly filmed the ongoing refugee crisis caused by the war in Syria, following people as they try to find a new life. His first feature documentary Memento premiered at the 24th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, where it received the award for Best New Greek Director.

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IL MODERNISSIMO DI BOLOGNA

(Bologna’s Modernissimo)

54 minutes, 2022
Director : Giuseppe SCHILLACI (France)
Production : Kolam Productions (France)

Through the story of the Modernissimo, an underground cinema built in 1914 in the bowels of Bologna and abandoned in the 2000’s, this documentary tells the history of Italian cinema in the style of an amateur film. Bologna’s official 20th century archives intertwine with the personal archives of a father speaking to his long-lost son. He dedicates this unpretentious film to him. Between his unrealised dreams both as a revolutionary and a film-maker, the father retraces a family history inhabited by ghosts, inviting his son to Bologna for the reopening of the Modernissimo, the mythical cinema which spanned his life.

Giuseppe SCHILLACI was born in Palermo and lives in Paris, where he works as a film director. After a master’s in Communication Sciences at Bologna’s University of Letters and Philosophy (master’s thesis with Umberto Eco), he worked in theatre and cinema as an executive producer, head of development and production assistant on several international films, including Wim Wenders’ The Palermo Shooting and John Turturro’s Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy. In 2019 he was selected as artist in residence for Matera European City of Culture to create a virtual reality film in collaboration with Euro-Mediterranean poets.

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THE LAST TAPE FROM BOSNIA

66 minutes, 2021
Director : Albert SOLÉ (Spain)
Production : Minimal Films (Spain), Clack (Spain)

All the men in Sifa’s family were killed during the Srebenica massacre. Later they were all identified in the mass graves, except for her older brother. Now Sifa has to return to her native Bosnia for another funeral. This trip allows her to grasp the situation in this Balkan country 25 years after the end of the war and ask herself: could it happen again?

Born in Bucharest in 1962, Albert SOLÉ worked for many years as a television journalist specializing in social and international subjects for the public channels Tve and Tv3. In 2002 he began to make documentaries for Spanish and international television channels and institutions, such as Tve, Tv3, Canal Cuatro, Arte, Unesco, Expo Zaragoza, and Mexico’s Canal 22, among others. After a long series of films in this field he made his first cinema documentary in 2007: Bucarest, Memoria Perdida, which won the 2009 Goya Award for Best Documentary plus several others, including the Mediterranean Memory Award at the 2009 PriMed. His documentaries have been broadcast on television around the world and selected to participate in numerous national and international festivals.

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SPARKS IN TIME

(Des étincelles dans le temps)

81 minutes, 2021
Director : Jurij GRUDEN (Slovenia)
Production : Senca Studio (Slovenia), Avi Film (Slovenia) in coproduction with RTV Slovenia (Slovenia)

The year is 1978. A group of electrical engineering students set up a computer company, Iskra Delta Computers, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In the United States this was the era of Bill Gates, Gary Kildall, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Iskra Delta had a meteoric rise, in 1985 it built the world’s first and largest computer network in China. When the company’s technology became too powerful and too wide-spread it attracted the attention of the CIA, who wanted to prevent the enemy from gaining access to it. On the other side, the KGB saw Iskra Delta Computers as a last chance to fill the gaps in Soviet computing. The company also had problems with the Yugoslav secret police, the UDBA, and the local authorities – which demanded kick-backs. On top of that, Yugoslavia was facing a violent war.

Jurij GRUDEN was born in 1975 in Trieste, Italy. In 1996, he entered the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and graduated in film and television directing. During his studies he made short documentaries such as Images of the City (1998), followed by short drama films You Need to Love Somebody (2001), Moving Away (2002) and Waiting (2003, winning the Babic Award for student television drama short film). He has since directed several documentaries including: Sparks In Time (2021), Coffee Time (2016), Living Stone (2014), Music from Trieste to Tarvisio (2010). He is currently working on another documentary: From Sevnica to the White House (in post-production).

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CE QUE LA GUERRE A FAIT DE NOUS

51 minutes, 2021
Director : Romano BOTTINELLI (France)
Production : Les Films du Carry (France), France 3 Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France), Lyon Capitale TV (France)

I don’t know what my father went through during the Algerian war. One thing is certain, though, he came back marked. To give shape to this missing story, I went to meet former conscripts who have managed to free themselves from silence. They refuse the pension which is their due as combatants. This symbolic gesture shows their remorse at having been forced to obey dishonourable orders to subjugate a people who wanted independence. Seeing these men with their battered consciences, my father’s wound finally makes sense.

By training a dancer and choreographer, now a documentary director, Romano Bottinelli is an artist who explores and combines different worlds. Through his work he wants to come closer to the intimate and bring an offbeat, quirky and original point of view.

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#SCHOOLYARD. AN UNTOLD STORY

70 minutes, 2021
Director : Nurit KEDAR (Israel)
Production : Nurit KEDAR (Israel)

In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon. What was seen as a simple operation to dislodge the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the southern border region escalated into a massive war followed by a military occupation which lasted almost two decades. In the coastal city of Sidon, an Israeli paratroop company was ordered to guard over 1,000 prisoners in a school playground. Among the prisoners were a handful of militants, many civilians and a few doctors from the adjacent Red Crescent hospital. What was thought to be a simple task degenerated. There were many mistakes, resulting in the death of several prisoners. The soldiers who took part in this tragic event, the doctors who witnessed their war crimes, and the prisoners who endured their torture, never spoke. Until today.

Nurit Kedar is an Israeli documentary film-maker. She has received several awards both for her career and her documentaries. In particular her film “Life Sentences” won the Van Leer Group Foundation Award for Best Documentary and the Golden Lens at the 2013 Jerusalem Film Festival, as well as the Audience Award at the Millenium Film Festival. On television she worked as senior producer in CNN’s Jerusalem bureau. She is also an executive producer of the Israeli Channel 12 (commercial channel) for which she has also made documentaries. All her films have been shown on Israeli broadcasting networks.

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THE WIRE

75 minutes, 2021
Director: Tiha K. GUDAC (Croatia)
Production: Off World (Belgium), Kinoteka (Croatia), URGH!(Slovenia), RELATION04 MEDIA (Norway), IN SCRIPT (Lithuania)

By building an iron fence across the beautiful region of Kupa, Slovenia has made Croatia a sort of buffer against the influx of refugees from Bosnia trying to reach Europe. This fence has changed the local people’s way of life. The region has become an arena where, in times of crisis, all human nature’s different faces can be seen. And where the local population must find a way to cope with this situation in order to survive.

Tiha K. GUDAC is a Croatian film-maker. She is a director, scriptwriter and producer. She holds a Masters in Film Arts and also in Commercial Marketing. Her first film, “Naked Island” (2014), won several awards at international festivals and has been distributed in cinemas, on television and as a teaching tool. Recently she has made, written and co-produced three series of television documentaries for Croatia’s public broadcaster HRT. She is a member of the Director’s Guild of Croatia, Croatian Film-maker Association and Croatian Independent Artists Association.

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ERASMUS IN GAZA

88 minutes, 2021 (54 minutes for the Mediterranean Young People’s category)
Director: Chiara AVESANI and Matteo DELBò (Italy)
Production: Arpa Films (Spain)

Riccardo, an Italian medical student in his final year, goes on Erasmus. His destination: Gaza. He wants to become a war surgeon and is writing his thesis on wounds caused by explosive bullets. Entering Gaza is not easy. He has to obtain authorisation from three different authorities: the Israeli army, the Palestinian authority and Hamas. As soon as he arrives, the pressure builds. The future of the exchange programme depends on his experiences. The approaching war doesn’t help, he begins to have panic attacks. When the war resumes, Riccardo has to make difficult choices. Crossing the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip he also crossed the border between adolescence and adulthood.

Chiara AVESANI is a journalist. For many years she worked for RAI on investigative programmes such as Agorà and Report. She has worked with Al Jazeera as a freelancer on reports about the exodus of migrants. She has appeared on Compass, a foreign policy programme and America Tonight, a showcase for thought-provoking reporting. She was also a Sky News correspondent in Mosul. Since 2016 she has teamed up with Matteo Delbò on “Frontline of peace”, a series of web documentaries on the efforts of Iraqi civil society to rebuild the country. “Ghadeer” is the project’s first episode.

Matteo DELBÒ is a film-maker. Having graduated from the Rome International Film School, he won the David di Donatello Award for Best Short Film. For a long time he made live programmes for Italy’s leading digital newspaper il Corriere della Sera, covering natural disasters, demonstrations and in 2013 operations to rescue migrants from the Mediterranean. He also worked for Al Jazeera on the programme Witness and for Sky News from Mosul. With Chiara Avesani he made, “Ghadeer”. He was recently DoP on “One More Jump”, a documentary which won the Young Mediterranean People’s Award at the 2020 PriMed. He is currently working for RAI.

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