30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

HANDS ON

The Film Festival della Lessinia has always been close to local producers involved in the rediscovery and revitalization of ancient cultivars and breeds of animals. Together with the Terra della Selce Association, the participants will knead the eggs of the Grisa della Lessinia, the beautiful native hen with black and white spots, with the ancient wheat flours produced by Fondo Prognoi and will prepare bigoli, lasagna and tagliolini, using the kitchen tools of times gone by. It will then be possibile to take the fresh pasta home or enjoy it together in the Festival Trattoria.

SANS TOIT NI LOI

VAGABOND

Agnès Varda / 100 min / 1985 / France

A portrait of the enigmatic Mona, a young girl who cannot do without freedom: starting backwards from her death, through flashbacks and without frills the film reconstructs the last two months of her life, her wanderings, her desires, and her adventures. An ode to wandering and to the irrepressible call of the journey.

DER ZAUBERBERG: 100 YEARS OF THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN BY THOMAS MANN

An absolute masterpiece that made its mark on the history of twentieth-century literature, Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) was published 100 years ago. The Film Festival della Lessinia honours this anniversary with a round-table discussion organized in collaboration with the Goethe Zentrum and the Università degli Studi di Verona. Participating are Luca Crescenzi (La montagna magica come sogno) and Riccardo Panattoni (Il tempo è uscito dai suoi cardini?). Moderator: Mario Allegri.

APERITIF WITH THE DIRECTORS

Learn about the day’s film programme and meet the filmmakers present at the festival. At the end of the meeting there will be a tasting of products from small producers, with non- alcoholic cocktails and wines from Lessinia wineries. Organized by GAS (Social Purchasing Group) Lessinia.

PATARA XOCHOS DABRUNEBA

A LITTLE BEETLE RETURNS

Elene Sebiskveradze / 4 min / 2023 / Norway, Georgia

A small beetle tries to escape from a sink drain, but ... too late! He is overwhelmed by the water and dragged into the pipes. From he will begin a grandiose journey to again reach the light of day, among shapes, colours and mysterious encounters.

THE WOLF OF CUSTER

Tanya J  Scott / 8 min / 2023 / Italian premiere / United Kingdom

A legendary wolf with fur as shiny as the moon terrorises the town of Custer, North Dakota, and enlivens the stories its inhabitants tell while gathered around the evening bonfire. A skilled hunter is skeptical and sets out to hunt the legendary wolf. Instead of killing it, however, he will recognise its value and beauty. Inspired by a true story.

KUUMBA UMBO

BIRTH OF FORM

Ekaterina Ogorodnikova / 6 min / 2022 / Belgium, United States

An elder of an African tribe, now tired of life, rests his grey head on a tree trunk and suddenly remembers his childhood adventures with his buffalo friend. This friend, sacrificed for the life of the tribe, was honoured in ritual dances with a majestic mask, which ended up in the hands of an art collector. What will become of the memory and fascinating traditions of these people?

BOAT PEOPLE

Kjell Boersma, Thao Lam / 9 min / 2023 / Italian premiere / Canada

The determination and spirit of sacrifice of ants are the source of inspiration for a young Vietnamese family that finds the strength to escape on a small boat from Vietnam, besieged by the American army, to finally reach Canada. Years later, the little girl, now an adult, talks about her memories and the enormous effort of her parents that allowed her and her brother to survive that tragedy.

THE GRAND MOTHER

Julia Hazuka / 10 min / 2023 / Italian premiere / Poland

In the mists of time, a huge female spider collects a drop of sunshine and creates the first man from a tangle of webs. When he becomes an adult, she will give him a family of similar before holing up forever in darkness. A fascinating and original myth about the creation of man, and a vision of spiders seen with different eyes.

SWIMMING WITH WINGS

Daphna Awadish Golan / 10 min / 2023 / Israel, Netherlands

Immigrating to a foreign country is not easy, even for a child. Lyri, an Israeli girl, and some of her peers from various parts of the world, tell in simple but sincere words the difficulties of leaving their native country, the oddities of a different culture--such  as learning to swim with their clothes on -- but also the positive aspects of a new life.

MÛ

Malin Neumann / 6 min / 2023 / Italian premiere / Germany

For some time now the water from a sacred spring, an indispensable source of life for all the animals and plants of the forest, has ceased to flow. The drought rages and little by little puts to sleep every last longing for life. The only hope is to leave for a long journey, to re-feed the source with the precious snow of the highest mountain. So a child, on the back of his faithful otter, decides to depart for the mountains.

A MENINA COM OS OLHOS OCUPADOS

THE GIRL WITH OCCUPIED EYES

André Carrilho / 8 min / 2024 / Portugal

The village where a little girl wanders is full of vitality and energy, but she doesn't notice anything, hypnotised as she is in front of her cell phone. So she meets, without seeing them, a kind lady, pirates, even a bear and aliens! Nothing distracts her, until one day her cell phone slips from her hand and breaks. As if freed from a spell, the little girl encounters the world around her for the first time and, finally, smiles.

Alexander Sifontes, Crucita Berti, Francesco Sauro, Freddy Vergara
PEMÓN, THE PEOPLE OF THE SACRED MOUNTAINS

The indigenous world preserves within itself that sacred and ancestral relationship with nature that the Western world has lost. Alexander Sifontes and Crucita Berti, two indigenous Pemón people from the Kamarakoto community, left the slopes of the enormous flat-topped mountain of Auyan-Tepui in Venezuela to come to Lessinia to talk about their particular and profound “feeling” of the mountains. They dialogue, with words and images, in a story made up of myths and daily struggles, together with the geologist Francesco Sauro and the Venezuelan naturalist Freddy Vergara. As part of the “Novaera” project.

FLOTACIJA

FLOTATION

Eluned Zoë  Aiano , Alesandra  Tatić / 77 min / 2023 / Italian premiere / Serbia

In Majdanpek, a city in eastern Serbia with a dual identity divided between magic and industry, the fate of a family is intrinsically linked to both. Desa is the widow of the union leader who seeks to carry on his legacy by ensuring the rights of the miners' families. Her brother Dragan is the last of a line of dragon hunters, fighting to keep the tradition alive.

LA RAYA

POPPY CRASH

Andalusia K. Soloff / 27 min / 2023 / Italian premiere / Mexico

In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, it is the red poppies that support the fragile local economy. Farmers sell the opium paste, but with the spread of Fentanyl (a synthetic opioid) prices plummet. Many indigenous farmers migrate to work, exploited, as labourers or join organised crime, while others struggle to survive by harvesting corn.

GRASS-SEEKERS

The authors of the book Cercatori d’erba (Scripta Edizioni, 2022) Marco Simonini (photographer), Francesco Grubert (agronomist, cheese expert, and author of the texts), Amina Pedrinolla (architect, cultural mediator, and author of the pictorial works) tell fifteen stories of men and women in as many mountain huts in Trentino: a journey that follows the “miracle” of grass turning into cheese. The meeting is followed by a tasting of mountain cheeses from Trentino and from the Lessinia mountain huts of the Monte Veronese Consortium, with wines from the Musella winery.

AGENT OF HAPPINESS

Dorottya Zurbó, Arun Bhattarai / 94 min / 2024 / Bhutan, Hungary

Can happiness be measured? Bhutan invented "Gross National Happiness" to calculate the well-being of its citizens. Amber is one of the agents who travel door to door across the country meeting people from all walks of life. By interviewing them and listening to them at length, to establish their level of happiness, Amber himself will reflect on the fragility and beauty of his own happiness and will feel that something inside him is changing.

CAIO CHAGAS TRIO

Three musicians investigate Brazilian musical culture and the melodies and rhythms of the land where Caio Chagas was born and trained musically. A singer- songwriter from Fortaleza, after moving to Italy Chagas joined the bassist Alessandro Fajeti and the percussionist Michele (Pane) Pasini to found the Caio Chagas Trio. The three artists bring the rhythmic and harmonic beauty of Brazilian music to the stage, performing singer-songwriter tracks as well as popular and original songs.

MIDNIGHT GOURMET DISH

With Edoardo Spinelli, chef of Agriturismo La Marmacola