BURNT. BORING PORTRAIT OF AN ANGRY, YOUNG, BLACK MAN
Ben Donateo / Switzerland / 2022 / 12 min / Colour
Italian premiere
The 4:3 screen contains the anguish of Muley, a boy of African origins, who we would call "black", but who feels like nothing more than "a stranger in a foreign land". His sense of disorientation is tangible, in a place that is both multicoloured and monochromatic at the same time. There is no place for him, the promises of a better future have gone up in smoke. "Don't worry about me, everything is fine", he says to his sister on the phone, for him the only means of connecting with his loved ones, with which he tries to keep himself away from the sense of estrangement and boredom that he now also carries within, along with the still-fresh string of frustration from collapsing expectations. In the meantime the stream flows between the cranes ready to pour cement and the nature of a silent Swiss mountain, which observes severely without offering answers, but only a distant sense of company suffocated by the deepest loneliness.
Ben Donateo
Born in Switzerland in 1988, after studying cinema in Los Angeles he attended the La Sapienza University of Rome. His short Lorem Ipsum (2022) had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. Burnt. Land of Fire (2020) was screened at, among others, the Locarno Film Festival and IDFA in Amsterdam. Donateo was part of the IDFA Academy 2021 and the Zurich Film Festival Academy 2020. He founded the D.R.C. Creativity Productions with which he carries out his projects.
Credits
Screenplay Ben DonateoCinematography Ben DonateoSound Ben DonateoEditing Ben DonateoProducer Jenny Covelli, Ben Donateo