SPECIAL 62nd Festival of Peoples - 20/28 November 2021 #1 (DAY1)

Diaries of Otsoga di Miguel Gomes and Maureen Farmer apre il #FdP62: Joy and desire for the new cinema beyond the pandemic with a frame that was chosen for the poster 2021

(Florence Luigi Noera – The photos are published courtesy of FdP)

It will be Diários de Otsoga's first national team, the film shot during the quarantine by the Portuguese couple in co-debut Miguel Gomes and Maureen Fazendeiro, to inaugurate the 62° Festival of Peoples, the international documentary film festival, at the cinema La Compagnia di Firenze, in the presence of the authors. The poster of the new edition is linked to the film: “A masterpiece out of every scheme - underlines Alessandro Stellino, artistic director of the festival - an artistic gesture which is also a hope for the future, beyond the pandemic ".

World premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, in the autonomous section Fortnight and received with great acclaim from critics and the public, the film is a festive tribute to cinema as a shared creative act and tells the story of a troupe committed to making a feature film during the most acute phase of the restrictions of the 2020. Stay in a fazenda in the Portuguese countryside, they discuss what to do and shoot each scene on the basis of day-to-day decisions, giving life to a work in which the narration of the tale is intertwined with the lives of its own protagonists, without ever being too clear what happens in the reality of everyday life or in the fiction of the staging. A distinctive note is the back story mechanism (otsoga = august): the film begins with the last day of production and ends with the first, in which all the staff at work are summoned to hear and learn about the anti-Covid provisions illustrated by the health manager.

"Miguel Gomes is one of the most relevant directors on the contemporary scene" Alessandro Stellino said “And Maureen Fazendeiro among the most promising voices of the new cinema. Together they created a magical film, dreamy, light and melodic like a sonata, but at the same time brilliant in how it claims the need for an even freer and more personal cinema in an era painfully marked by the pandemic and an apparently irreversible seventh art crisis. Diários de Otsoga asks the viewer to share his hilarious and playful spirit and pushes him not to ask himself questions about the veracity of what is shown to him, in the awareness that cinema - even the most strictly documentary - is always and first of all staged. Precisely this was one of the guiding criteria of our selection work for the program and we are delighted that to represent it is a masterpiece out of every scheme ".

The section also begins Diamonds are forever – Utopia Rossa, with archival materials from the Festival dei Popoli dedicated to the thirty years since the end of the Soviet Union, which took place in December of 1991. Don't miss “Our Century” by Artavazd Pelesjan (1983), reflection on flight and the fragility of existence, in the assembly of archival material that alternates the Soviet space dream with images of 20th century air disasters.

The program of the 62nd edition with the historic International Competition (18 films between short films, medium-length films and feature films, all unpublished in Italy) and the Italian Competition (7 absolute unpublished, for an exciting journey in modern-day Italy) it is accompanied by numerous Special Events (spectacular films for the general public); the Let the Music Play section dedicated to the musical documentary; the focus dedicated to the environment with Habitat films, the section aimed at young spectators and families, Popoli for Kids and Teens and the classics to be rediscovered by Diamonds.

In fact, the festival presents a selection from the historical archive of FdP dedicated to 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union in the Diamonds Are Forever - Utopia Rossa section; Borders on fire, the tribute dedicated to Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval; the renewed section dedicated to the musical documentary. A look at the new generations in Doc At Work - Future Campus, with short films by young directors from film schools across Europe. The novelty of this edition will then be Pop Corner: Encounters on the edge of reality, the talks of the festival in the center of Florence: five conversations to talk about gender, imaginary, environments, cultures and generations, from 22 al 26 November at 19 in the new space of 25 Hours Hotel (Piazza di San Paolino, 1).

Durante i talk, ten exceptional guests will meet to provide original interpretations of reality and current issues proposed by the documentaries scheduled at the 62nd Festival dei Popoli. Among the guests Gianna Fratta and Vera Gheno (22/11); Michele Smargiassi and Paolo Woods (23/11); Annalisa Corrado and Francesco Ferrini (24/11); Tomaso Montanari (25/11); Irene Dionisio e Voodoo Kid (26/11).

I 18 Italian and international premieres of the international competition (feature films,medium and short films) will be submitted to the judgment of the jury composed of Kieron Corless (Great Britain), Anita Piotrowska (Poland), Yolande Zauberman (France) which will award the following prizes: Best Award

Feature film (euro 8.000); Best Medium-length Film Award (euro 4.000); Best Short Film Award (euro 2.500) and the “Gian Paolo Paoli” Plaque for the Best Anthropological Film.

Another highlight of the program is the Italian Competition with 7 documentaries that represent the best of Italian production 2021, which will be submitted to the jury composed by the director and author Irene Dionisio, Jérémie Jorrand and the writer, editor and selector Giovanni Marchini Camia.

The world premiere of de The age of innocence Enrico Maisto, a personal diary that is also the story of a sentimental education; The moment of passage of the director Chiara Marotta, who decides to return home to confront the family and religious community from which she left years earlier. Laura Viezzoli's film entitled When you are close to Me is dedicated to the extraordinary modes of interaction of a group of deafblind people and people with sensory disabilities.. Scheduled, then, La Zita by Tiziano Doria and Samira Guadagnuolo, a personal portrait of a Southern Italy in which contradictions of distant worlds coexist; The war to come by Marco Pasquini brings to the screen the slow times of life at the front, through careful and silent observation alongside members of the Syrian army. Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini sign Late August, that captures the silence of time and the noise of life, against the backdrop of a Sicilian landscape in late summer; Los Zulugas by Flavia Montini tells the story of an Italian citizen of Colombian origin who decides to return to Colombia to face his painful past.

Finally we point out the spectacular musical-themed documentaries enrich the sezione Let The Music Play! Which attract the general public. I'm 5 Italian premiere documentaries. From progressive rock in the absolute preview of the work progress of In theCourt of the Crimson King on Robert Fripp and his historic group to the extreme "noise" of À qui veut bien l'entendre passing through the house genre told through music and testimony of one of his godparents in Laurent Garnier: Off the Record. Then the prodigy of flamenco in Canto cósmico. El Niño de Elche and the tales of the very young who came out of school and catapulted directly into the world of talent shows in Fuoriclasse.

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