Kicking off an exciting chain of announcements that will carry through next week, the 21st edition of the Giornate degli Autori, aka as Venice Days , announced their lineup this morning via press release. Modelled after the Director’s Fortnight that runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Days aims to draw attention to international cinema with a specialized focus for innovation, research, originality, and independence. The festival includes competition titles and out-of-competition special event screenings, both of which are hosted in theaters provided by the Venice Film Festival. No documentaries are in competition this year.
The side-bar opens with The Open Couple, a freewheeling documentary that spotlights the social tolerances between monogamy and polyamory relationships. Adapted from a play of the same name by Franca Rame and Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, Federica Di Giacomo’s intelligent farce on sexual politics will premiere on August 28.
After debuting at the Berlinale with The Teaches of Peaches, the iconic German-based singer and performer Peaches returns to the festival circuit with another documentary celebrating her work and legacy. With Peaches Goes Bananas, French filmmaker Marie Losier examines the feminist icon’s artistic reinvention. The documentary provides an introspective view of Peaches’ jam-packed concerts, the construction of her first opera, and her intimate relationship shared with her sister Suri. “Marie Losier, well known for her intimate portraits of underground artists, revisits the iconic feminist singer and performer Peaches and a 14-year-long friendship,” comments Gaia Furrer, the artistic director of the Giornate Degli Autori. “The result is an anti-biographical portrait of the artist that still captures her essence, and the trust and friendship between the two women.”
The film Soul of the Desert spotlights another important queer-focused documentary at the festival. Directed by Monica Taboada Tapia, the film follows Georgina, an elderly trans-woman who is forced to cross the sandy peninsula of Guajira, Colombia by foot, to obtain the legal document that finally recognizes her as the person she has always identified as.
Acclaimed Serbian documentarian Mladen Kovačević spotlights the search for a new Eden with Possibility of Paradise. The film examines what it means to live in an earthly nirvana. Told through select stories, the film recalls archetypal representations of heaven on earth while dealing with existential tensions and ethical dilemmas surrounding the search for happiness.
Other note-worthy non-fiction titles featured in this year’s Venice Days slate includes Soudan, souviens-toi. The film meticulously reconstructs fragments of the ongoing war in Sudan by giving voice to the resilient survivors amid the ongoing war. Hind Meddeb’s powerful film spotlights the young people of the region who struggle against their oppressors in a country devastated by poverty and violence. Cláudia Varejão, who won the Giornate degli Autori for her feature Lobo e cão (2022), returns to the festival with a new short film Kora. Proclaimed as a manifesto against war and discrimination against women, the feminist short film welcomes back a promising new voice in Portuguese cinema.
Every year, ten features compete for the Giornate degli Autori Award. The award is accompanied by a cash prize of €20,000 that’s equally split between the filmmaker and the film’s international distributor. By accepting the prize money, the sum must be used to promote the winning film internationally. The Venice Days will also screen a wide arrange of narrative features including The Quay Brothers’ kaleidoscopic stop-motion reverie Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hour Glass, Kohei Igarasi’s timeless love story Super Happy Together, Shahab Fotouhi’s Iranian introspection Boomerang, and Camille Lugan’s star-studded crime fable Selon Joy.
