Films in English at the 2024 ‘Cinema e Donne’ (Women in Cinema) Festival

 

November 20 – 24: FESTIVAL DI CINEMA E DONNE 2024 (Women & Cinema). Cinema La Compagnia, via Cavour 52/4. Varied Hours of talks and screenings. Many films are in English or with English subtitles.

The Festival di Cinema e Donne makes a return to La Compagnia, celebrating its 45th year of showcasing women in film. After a hiatus, the festival is back in full force: the program this year is incredibly diverse, with works coming from 19 different countries. The festival is meant to highlight the work of female directors and screenwriters, and covers a wide breadth of subject matter, many telling fascinating stories about women and their own experiences and interpersonal relationships. Opening night, on Wednesday, November 20, will consist of a special dialogue between one of the featured filmmakers of the festival: Margaret Von Trotta, a trailblazer for the German New Cinema movement and Piera Detassis, the President and Artistic Director of the Italian Film Academy. 

Below is a brief look at films in English or with English subtitles.

Never Look Away (2024); directed by Lucy Lawless, will screen on Thursday, November 21 at 3 pm. It is a New Zealand documentary which follows CNN Reporter Margaret Moth who captures firsthand conflict within war zones. It will be followed by a few short films which will show at 9 pm, including If You Are Happy (2023), by Phoebe Arnstein, an English director, and illuminates the complexities of new motherhood and September Says (2024), directed by Ariane Labed, the story of two sisters, their conflict, and the transformation of their relationship as they are forced to move to an isolated Irish coastal town with their mother.

Some of the films in English highlighted on Friday the 22nd include Familiar Touch (2024), at 3 pm. Directed by Sarah Friedland, Familiar Touch is an American film that confronts the challenges of ageing, as the protagonist, an 80 year old woman, transitions into life at a nursing home. American director and playwright Annie Baker’s Janet Planet (2023) follows at 5 pm. The movie is an intimate telling of a young girl’s adoration and obsession with her mother.

A special evening is planned for Saturday the 23rd that includes the presentation of French director and screenwriter Céline Sciamma which is a screening of Not a Pretty Picture (1975) at 7 pm.  A work by director Martha Coolidge in which the actors reenact a real experience that Coolidge had with sexual violence, and the events that surrounded it. At 9 pm an Italian short film, with English subtitles, is scheduled, Things That My Best Friend Lost (2023), set within a surreal party, in which the DJ Andrea, sends voice messages expressing the flow of emotions bubbling up in and around him.

 The program will feature L’occhio della gallina (2024), on Sunday, November 24, at 5 pm. The Italian film with English subtitles, by director Antonietta De Lillo unpacks the director’s personal artistic journey connecting to the larger human experience dealing with power and cultural marginalization. At 9 pm there will be a short film presentation of Tape 001: Grace (2023), an Italian work by Lisa Mazzei and Leonardo Fiori, which presents a night time skateboard ride surrounded by imagery and media of the 1990s. It will be followed by I Saw The TV Glow (2024) by Jane Schoenbrun, a coming of age American film about two young peers connecting over their love of a TV show, that allows them to dissociate from their given reality, and be somewhere and someone else which alludes to a larger theme of the movie about gender identity, specifically the transgender experience. 

The focus of the festival will continue beyond next week as well, as a longer project by Piera Detassis and Raffaella Giancristofaro called Cinema, The Other History, which intends to highlight female directors, screenwriters, and actresses that have been overlooked through the history of cinema, and will continue through the up-coming months. Chantal Akerman the Belgian film director, screenwriter, and artist will be highlighted first.  (Piper Begler)