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Browse through the detailed list of the screening films of the 5th Firenze Film Festival edition and explore our diverse programme.
Ali and His Miracle Sheep
Guided by his grandmother’s haunting Sumerian lament, 9-year-old mute Ali takes his sheep, Kirmeta, for sacrifice on a strenuous 400km journey across Iraq’s landscape, destroyed by years of war, to the shrine of an ancient saint. Along the journey Kirmeta becomes increasingly resistant and runs away to escape his bloody fate. Ali eventually finds Kirmeta amongst carcasses of cars leftover from decades of violence and false promises of freedom. When Kirmeta collapses from exhaustion the pilgrims think he’s dead. But with the continuous prayers of grandmother back in the village, Kirmeta mysteriously recovers. Witnessing this the pilgrims declare him a MIRACLE SHEEP, a reputation that accompanies them on the rest of their journey. Can both boy and sheep survive the hardship and accept their fate? A lyrical hybrid film whose symbolism exposes the suffering of a nation whose only hope left is a mute child and his “miraculous” sheep.
Maythem Ridha
August Sky
As the Amazon burns for the seventeenth day, a nurse in Sao Paulo finds herself drawn to a neo-Pentecostal church.
Jasmin Tenucci
Beauty
Callie, an unemployed young woman living with her controlling mother, is looking for a way out through the glittery yet cruel YouTube beauté universe. She will go beyond her limits to please her handful of subscribers while keeping up a smiling face and maintaining a perfect image
Thanos Liberopoulos
Body
A nameless mute appears in an empty field. The lonely widow materialized him from her thoughts to help her out on her farm. Over time, the mute quietly starts yearning to be loved. Once the widow’s son comes to visit, she hides her secret helper in the forest. Overwhelmed with longing, the mute disobeys.
Marijana Verhoef
Censor Of Dreams
Every night, The Censor and his team moderate Yoko’s dreams. Tonight nothing happens as planned.
Leo Berne, Raphaël Rodriguez
Cruise
We’ve all received scam phone calls, but what about the person making the calls? Cruise is a dark workplace satire about a hapless telemarketer trying mightily to give away a free cruise. And if he fails, there will be dire consequences.
Sam Rudykoff
Currents / Perpendicolare Avanti
Currents / Perpendicolare Avanti is a camera-less| hand-made, 16mm film collage, based on the artist's autobiographical experience as an immigrant. The film explores the dynamics of inhabiting the in-between space of multiple countries and temporalities through visual and sound abstraction, interlacing and recycling pre-existing film materials and fragments of otherwise anonymous orphan films. Utilizing these so-called “scraps”, Currents is a film of extensive remediation, treated by hand through the use of the emulsion lifting technique, thereby re-imagining, re-constructing, and de-constructing the liminality of immigrant life. The re-writing of the self in Currents is produced through the archives of others, via associative montage and repeated performative acts on the surface of the film.
Federica Foglia
Elias Is A Panther
“Elias Is A Panther” is a documentary about a boy, Timian, and his chronically ill brother, Elias. When Elias dies, Timian must tackle the pain of loss and his family’s grief. Timian will not talk about Elias’s illness and eventual death. He would rather be a tiger and play forever with Elias, a panther, in the jungle of his imagination.
Anita Aamodt Enersen, Nic Osborne
Francesca & Love
In her 60s, a visual artist full of vitality and energy embarks on an inner journey through Tinder, the artistic process and contact with her loved ones to redefine love when her only daughter leaves the nest.
Alba Sotorra Clua
Il Fagotto – The Load
Denatality is making one town disappear. The Government is set pressing measures, not just psychological ones. Females who don’t contribute to the demographic future of the country are seen as a problem to resolve, thus every year they are called to declare to a Government Office the reason why they haven’t had any babies in the last twelve months. In an out of time world, that reminds us more with every passing day, Bianca and Vittoria are at the opposite angles of their fertility time. Their acquaintance forces them to choose in an instant the direction of their future: any choice will result in a radical change of their destiny.
Giulia Giapponesi
Magaluf Ghost Town
Magaluf Ghost Town is a choral portrait of a community during the off-season and high season, in a tone of mystery, close to a thriller but without losing sight of the costumbrist comedy, mixing documentary and fiction. It is a story of international scope about the dreams of a town that is just trying to survive in a touristic context, and also a reflection on what it means to be a tourist in Europe.
Miguel Angel Blanca
Marana
In the Italian foothills, summer is almost over. Mirko and Max meet in the forest and wander in abandoned places, trying to imagine a possible future, while Giorgia and Lorenzo live timid moments of intimacy. In the background, a daily life of a community of teenagers with ASD, who manage to live in balance between real and fantastic, physical and metaphysical, fear and pleasure of getting lost. They live “outside” time, a condition that allows them to experience an ephemeral present made of discoveries, rituals and relationships. Marana is a journey into the world of autism, where the desires of youth are narrated without preconceptions and recorded in their simple becoming.
Giovanni Benini, Davide Provolo
Naughty Spot
It’s Tonio’s first time in Corsica. He wanders across the island and on dating apps until stumbling upon the Oracle, a user who tells him about gay life in Corsica. Their conversation is reenacted with an actor who seems to connect deeply with the Oracle’s story.
Jean COSTA
Olvido & Leon
After fifteen years, Olvido has accepted that her problem is not her twin brother, León, who has Down Syndrome. She could abandon him, but she has accepted that her problem involves powers unknown to her which she cannot properly identify, although she senses their presence. Powers that weave, like a spider, a web of social and personal discontent.
XAVIER BERMÚDEZ
Ostrov – Lost Island
On the island of Ostrov in the Caspian Sea the inhabitants, left alone by the Russian state after the collapse of the Soviet Union, survive through poaching. Ivan regularly goes out to sea risking his life and freedom. In addition to the political aspect, the film's empathetic view also paints a touching family portrait of its protagonists, who cling to a sense of hope in their family and community. The strong audiovisual approach capturing the rough natural beauty of the island underlines the cinematic potential of the film.
Svetlana Rodina, Laurent Stoop
Our Land
‘Our Land’ is the story of Britain’s black farmers, food growers and activists who are shaking up the system; carving their own path in the predominantly white agricultural industry.
Alexandra Genova
Red Lines White Lines Fine Lines
A young woman paints an intimate picture of her destructive thought patterns by chronologically reciting poetry she wrote during her darkest years. Passing through three stages of her psyche, she admits she fears to lose her creativity in happiness – how to be the artist who does not suffer?
India Zahra Lyell
Salvador Dali
Every day a little Orozbek has to walk long distances and a river crossing to get to school. Because that's where he has a chance to get closer to his dream.
Eldiar Madakim
The Bends
A mixed martial arts fighter discovers she’s pregnant in the lead-up to the most important fight of her career, in this AACTA-nominated Australian short film. A docu-drama hybrid propelled by a reticent yet affecting performance from pro-amateur MMA fighter Annie Thatcher, The Bends is an elevated, empathetic portrait of a person accustomed to pushing their body to its limit, but who now must choose between conquering it or keeping it safe for another.
Tom Campbell
The Dreams Of Lonely People
After twenty years in prison, a man returns to his family home to die alone. A mysterious figure from the magical world of nature begins to appear in his surroundings. Getting to know her could be the best time of his life. What are the real consequences of this meeting?
Marek Leszczewski
The Game
STRAHINJA, a smuggler in the Balkan’s modern “migration industry”, longs for a flashy lifestyle. These aspirations and his emotional unavailability have estranged him from his wife, TIJANA, and their son, LUKA (7), the very people he hopes to impress. When a routine trip is interrupted by police, Strahinja becomes stranded with refugee teens, Yousef (17) his younger brothers and a traveling companion. The boys are refugees but above all else they are teenagers who long to have experiences that are something close to normal. The more time Strahinja spends with them, the more he struggles with seeing this as just a job. Their open hearted approach to life makes him aware of the walls he has built around his own.
Ana Lazarevic
The Perfect David
At sixteen, David is much like any teenager, but his boyish good looks rest upon a hulking, muscular body. His weightlifting obsession is driven by his mother Juana, a troubled artist whose only goal is to have her son reach physical perfection by his seventeenth birthday. With countless hours spent at a grungy gym in the company of a motley clique of pumped-up gym rats, David desperately searches for what it means to be a man. With his birthday approaching, Juana demands growth at any cost. Soon David’s cohorts offer him dangerous chemical shortcuts, sending the teen spiraling into a cycle of physical and emotional torment. Pushed in every direction by adults who only take and trapped inside a body that is growing to freakish proportions, David rages against this brutally imposed armor. And his only way out is to stop being perfect.
Felipe Gómez Aparicio
The Tree of my Yearnings
After ten years of yearning for a child Zühre can't stand anymore and forces her husband Ömer to have a second wife in the hope of Ömer's becoming a father. Bearing the consequences of her decision would not be easy for both of them.
Emel Bulut
This is not a Love Story
Marlina, a paralyzed girl is found in a garbage truck by Jaya, a street vendor in Jakarta, and rescued. Despite the fact that Marlina's family is offering a reward to the person who finds her, and Jaya's friend advises him to return her to the family| he decides to keep her for a little longer. Over the course of a few days, both develop an interesting relationship.
Sidi Saleh
Turning Man – 81RPM
Jürgen Leppert, also known as "Der Dreher" or "der Kreisel" is a graduate engineer, speaker inventor, 360 degree dancer, gifted Frisbee player and thoroughbred 68er. Everything revolves around the Karlsruher legend, and not just on the dance floor. A declaration of love to music, dancing and rebellion. A portrait of a tough person who still swims against the stream and the living proof that 81 years is far from too old for hard raves.
Robin Trouillet
Vlada Goes to London
Vlada is a pizza delivery girl who lives in Haifa and dreams of becoming a famous DJ. Within a five-hour shift, we get a glimpse into her world full of pressure where she's willing to do whatever it takes to find the money for a flight to perform at a festival in London.
Arti Savchenko
Where Do We Go?
A mother consumed by grief ventures into the mountains with no intention of returning but an encounter with an old, enigmatic, postwoman sets her life on a new path.
Barbara Lervig
Young Hearts
It's summer's end, Arthur, Yuna, Lucie and Jurijn are seventeen. As they enjoy their last moments of freedom by the pond| hearts and bodies are in search for each other, desperately trying to connect. On this hot summer day, they face the inner turmoil of adolescence.
Emilie Vandenameele