#SICILIAQUEERFF 2021 / PALERMO, 3 – 6 JUNE 2021 Part one

The eleventh edition of the Sicilia Queer resists, it raises and takes place in presence, maintaining continuity also in the second pandemic year, with the ambition of representing a significant cultural garrison in the Italian panorama. Despite the Coronavirus and all the uncertainties of a very difficult year, after long months of closure of cinemas and cultural spaces, Sicilia Queer has been making since 3 al 6 June a substantial first part of this edition which will continue from 8 to 12 September with the competitive sections and its usual programming.

The Festival will open with the regional preview of Happy Together, cult film by Wong Kar-Wai restored in 4K which includes the integration of some scenes censored by distribution in the nineties: a choice of field that intends to support with conviction A question of style, courageous distribution project by Tucker Film.

Since 29 May, and up to 5 June, the section New Sicilian Lessons will propose the workshop conducted by the Palestinian director Kamal Aljafari, which will involve twelve students from all over Europe for a week of intensive seminar with one of the most poetic authors of contemporary cinema, awarded all over the world. The seminar activities will be accompanied by screenings and meetings - in dialogue with film critics and scholars such as Davide Oberto and Paola Caridi - open to the public, which will lead to the Transitions international conference: Moving Bodies and Images organizzato dal NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies) and scheduled online (Palermo, 7 – 13 June). In that same place, Tuesday 8 a meeting with Kamal Aljafari entitled Cinema as a Country is scheduled for June, while Sunday 13 June Queering Mediterranean Identities will be the appointment with the Franco-Moroccan writer and director Abdellah Taïa, one of the three keynote speakers of the conference.

The first part of the Sicilia Queer recovers some of the historical sections of the Festival at the same time as last year, Exceptionally, have been suspended due to the pandemic: the Attendance section, dedicated to the full retrospective and analysis of a young talent of contemporary Portuguese cinema such as Carlos Conceição, of which the recent one will be presented in a national preview, among others A thread of scarlet drool, and who will dialogue with directors such as Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia but also with the English Beatrice Gibson. But it also starts again Postcard Serge Daney, the section dedicated to the history of cinema, which will also continue in the second part of the festival and which will have a national preview in June Of them, three times Branco (France, 2018) Boris Nicot's film dedicated to independent producer Paulo Branco.

Among the titles of the non-competitive section Panorama Queer, the presence of the latest film by Bertrand Bonello stands out, Zombi Child (France, 2019), but also the latest film by Bruce LaBruce Saint-Narcisse, as well as the two winners of the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival 2020, If it was love (France, 2020) by the Austrian Patric Chiha dedicated to the company of Gisèle Vienne and the first work by Faraz Shariat Futur Drei (Germany- Iran, 2020), which will be the closing film of this first part of the festival.

More generally, Sicily Queer strongly wants to continue to be an opportunity for operators to meet, international critics and directors, who will have the opportunity to meet the public at the Cinema De Seta of the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa in Palermo.

SICILIA QUEER OPENING & CLOSING NIGHT (Arrow From movie / Cultural Shipyards alla Zisa / via Paolo Gili, 4)

THURSDAY 3 JUNE 2021 ore 20.30, OPENING NIGHT

Happy Together at Wong Kar-wai (Hong Kong, 1997) – restored version in regional preview – Two young lovers leave Hong Kong for Buenos Aires, looking for a bright future and a special place like the Iguazu Falls painted on the lamp that softly illuminates their room. Yiu-fai, methodical and reliable, and Po-wing, vain and inconstant, they are two opposites that attract. The first works as a buttadentro in a tango bar, while the other leads a promiscuous life, having the audacity to invite her lovers to the place where Yiu-fai works. Desire, passion, jealousy, anger and betrayal intertwine in the languid and voluptuous tango of their life, punctuated by the continuous “let's start from scratch” pronounced by Po-wing.

SUNDAY 6 JUNE 2021 ore 20.30, CLOSING NIGHT

Future Drei by Faraz Shariat (Germany, 2020) – in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Palermo – Parvis is a young man of Iranian origin who lives in Hanover. Caught stealing from the supermarket, he finds himself acting as an interpreter for refugees in a city facility. There he meets Amon who, together with his sister, he is eager to live a less precarious life. While a tortuous relationship begins between the two, the sister discovers that she will not be allowed to stay in Germany. Winner of the Teddy Award at the Berlinale 2020, Shariat's debut feature films the characters taking possession of a place, managing to grasp the imperceptible movement through which the individual and intimate body is transformed into a social body in all respects, becoming fully visible.

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