Martina Parenti

Students at an academy of singing, dance, and music are subjected to strict rules and arduous challenges in an atmosphere of fierce rivalry as they pursue the dream of becoming show business stars. The clandestine relationship of Lisa and Damiano is likely to cost them the opportunity to participate in the final contest and will have to decide whether to sacrifice love to achieve success.

Water, air, earth, fire, ether. Four different stories that tell and show a reaching out towards immortality. We dedicate the element water to immortality in science, that of air to the immortality of art, that of earth to the immortality of faith and that of fire to the immortality of feelings. Ether, linked to the cosmos and the stars, is a tribute to the film industry.

For Filmmaker Film Festival (2023), Fulvio Baglivi and Cristina Piccino asked some filmmakers (R. Beckermann, J. Bressane, D’Anolfi/Parenti, T. De Bernardi, L. Di Costanzo, A. Fasulo, F. Ferraro, M. Frammartino, S. George, ghezzi/Gagliardo, C. Hintermann, G. Maderna, A. Momo, A. Rossetto, M. Santini, C. Simon, S. Savona) to give us their own "lost road," that is, a sequence, scene or piece of editing that did not later find its way into the final version of one of their works. Each fragment has its own accomplished presence, often has a different title from the film it was made for, which is not necessary to have seen in order to find meaning; on the contrary, those who set out thinking they know the world they are walking through will find themselves displaced.

How to film war? «War and Peace» tells the story of the century-old relationship between cinema and war, from the time of their first encounter, way back in 1911 with the Italian invasion of Libya, up to the present day. Forging ahead from the images captured by the pioneers of cinema to today’s twitter feeds, following young soldiers as they are trained to film war, the alliance between cinema and war appears to be a powerful one.

From a Calabrian river to a night in Catania where stray dogs roam the city aimlessly: between these two extremes "full of emptiness" is built Checosamanca , a collective work, born with the intention of talking about the present, preferring the action to the easy complaint about the absence of the state and of politics.

«Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries» is an ‘encyclopaedic’ documentary, whose non-human protagonists tell about us humans. The film is divided into three volumes, each dealing with a single subject: animals, plants, stones. In this tripartite vision, each of its segment is a tribute to a specific genre of documentary filmmaking. Through the three volumes, a single dramaturgical body emerges, that stages a process of admission of responsibility, a process of maintenance and protection, and finally a process of rediscovery of a common and fundamental value: care.

We are at Niguarda, the most important hospital in Milan that has always been a point of reference for the homeless in the area. Today, the majority of patients are foreigners, to the point that in 2000, the Ethnopsychiatry service was created within the Department of Mental Health. It is here that those without a territorial reference find support within treatment paths. Often these are very vulnerable people, traumatized by the abuse suffered on the journey to Europe. The directors filmed three sessions at different times.

A short documentary showing the work of a Japanese researcher on jellyfish.

One year at Malpensa: four seasons spent following the bureaucracy, the procedures, the controls and the movements that are everyday occurrences inside an intercontinental airport. A public space, in which Italian and international police forces collaborate, where every gesture is captured by closed-circuit cameras, each piece of luggage is studied in all its recesses in an attempt to ward off a potential and unknown threat. A place in which fear is the only thing not in transit.

In a room of the Cineteca di Milano, Giancarlo Consonni and Graziella Tonon observe old films that have just been digitized: they tell of the life and projects of the architect, urban planner, painter and photographer Piero Bottoni. The film follows the couple's research among the materials stored both in the film library and above all in the archive. They tell of a multifaceted and socially committed artist, who has dedicated his life and his work to the primary intent of instilling dream and enchantment into reality, making use of the contribution of all the arts. Through the multiplicity of materials at our disposal - drawings, films, photos, surveys, projects, voices - the film shows the realization of Piero Bottoni's most ambitious project: the construction of a mountain in Milan, Monte Stella, born from the rubble of the Second World War.

A nocturnal voyage into the bowels of the Earth. The camera follows the work of a machine that is digging tunnels for new underground railway lines. A short film that starts from the darkness to slowly approach the light, when the last fragment of rock falls and the workers’ eternal night comes to an end. A film that shows the inextricable bond between man and machine.

Who are the people who will comprise Italy’s future leadership ? Three entrepreneurs offer some responses to the question: Antonio Ambrosetti, founder of a new course called «Leader del Futuro», Federcio Morgantini, a young man whose business ambitions take him to China, and Matteo Storchi, a succesful manager of a family business. The filmmakers want to record these individuals in «their roles as leaders within the society they represent.» So they follow their three protagonists through their working lives. All three are at a crucial stage in their careers: will they succeed in their respective projects? Taking a humorous perspective, navigating both hope and pessimism, the film moves from Italy to China on the heels of these contemporary entrepreneurs who are often destined to lead more through heredity than vocation.

Materia oscura tells the story of a war zone in peacetime. The film location is the Salto di Quirra test range (Sardinia, Italy) where, for over fifty years, governments around the world have tested 'new weapons' and where the Italian government has carried out controlled explosions of old weapon stocks, inexorably endangering the territory.

In Italy, couples prepare for their imminent weddings. The bureaucratic State and the dogmatic Church oversee the nuptials. Municipal employees listen to couples' statements and intentions. A provincial priest delivers a matrimonial lesson: speaking of faith and science, spirituality, and sexuality.

"Bestiari, erbari, lapidari" was presented at the Venice Film Festival in September 2024, was screened in many Italian cities and won the Best Director award at the IDFA festival in Amsterdam. The directors present in this subsequent film some previously unseen sequences from this project.

Filmmakers that were selected at Visions du Réel in the past twenty editions celebrate the Festival's anniversary by each making a short movie in which they expose their view of the future.

Stonecarvers, masons, carpenters, smiths, electricians, woodworkers, restorers, goldsmiths: the extraordinary, never-ending saga of the fabrication of Milan Cathedral is portrayed in the light of the sacredness of a building that lives through times, rhythms, calendars and aspirations that merge with and transcend the labor of men and women. The anonymous, humble, painstaking everyday care required by a structure such as the Cathedral, over the years and still today, reveals the magnificence of human action that spans time and generations, holding within itself a grand humanist sentiment.

Massimo D'Anolfi and Martina Parenti recount the birth and development of Bestiari, erbari, lapidari, their latest film, presented out of competition at the Venice Film Festival in September 2024.