Davide Palella
Directing
Biography
Davide Palella (1996, Italy) graduates in Media Design & Multimedia Arts at NABA (Milan) in 2019. The same year he directs his first medium-length film, Sirio (38', fiction, 2019), being selected for various festivals including: Filmmaker Festival (Milan), Slow Film Festival (Mayfield) and Fuorinorma (Rome). In April 2021 he's selected at the In Progress MFN development workshop, having as a mentor Michelangelo Frammartino and winning a development grant with his feature film project, Shura. Shura is then selected at the 2023-2024 Biennale College Cinema. Sonnenstube (8', documentary/animation, 2022) is made during the Locarno Spring Academy 2022 under the supervision of Michelangelo Frammartino and presented in the Pardi di Domani section as a special event during the 75th Locarno Film Festival. The short film is then screened at more than 20 international film festivals like Festival dei Popoli (Florence) and ZINEBI (Bilbao). A Short Film About Vanishing (3’, fiction, 2024) is his latest work. In September 2024 he is selected to the Pedro Costa Lab, making a short film (currently in post-production) under the guidance of the Portuguese master. He is editor-in-chief for the online film critic magazine Filmidee and film staging professor at the Istituto Cinematografico Michelangelo Antonioni.
Known For
Since the seventh century AD, Sado has been called the "island of exile". Unwelcomed people by the shogunate such as homeless, artists and politicians were exiled, some of them even put to forced labour in the mines. Their spirits, trapped in the depths of the earth, will never see the sky again.
Sado
Sergio Cortesi dedicated his life to solar observation. At the “Specola solare” in Locarno, between 1957 and 2021, he made over 15.000 sunspots drawings, driven by the faith of a monk to whom his own god never gave an answer.
Sonnenstube
It’s late at night when Etna begins to erupt. Volcanologists fear an unprecedented explosion, the area must be evacuated. A researcher decides to reach the summit crater to record a testimony: he’s sure the volcano is trying to tell him something.
A Short Film About Vanishing
A boy lives alone in the desert. He spends the day gathering firewood, waiting for an old man to provide him of the essentials to his survival.
Sirio
Planet Earth, year 2960 AD. A group of uranium hunters returns to the blue planet in search of the precious metal. The crackling of the Geiger counter leads one team member deep into a cave. There, the explorer encounters an ancient relic from the old world, awakening it from a slumber that had lasted for centuries, perhaps millennia.