SIFF 41 - 2023

The cave you fear holds the treasure you seek”

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. These the words of Joseph Campbell – one of the most influent scholars in comparative mythology – still echoing today and prompting a new way to reevaluate our fears. In 2023 we have witnessed an overwhelming increase in atrocity and dehumanization.
This inevitably leading to a tragic feeling of helplessness. The events related to the current international conflicts have uncovered a growing sense of loss and dismay – worsened by the careless amount of dubious views and opinions we are surrounded with. It feels rather hard to find our way through all this. And it looks even harder if we do nothing but feed the idiocy of these thoughts – as if we were all drowned in darkness. And it feels hard to get out. Thinking back to Campbell’s words and expanding their meaning, we may quote an inspiring line by Friedrich Hölderlin : where the danger is, also grows the saving power. We should look at darkness in a different way – a metamorphic way. Let us transmute it into that of a movie theater to be lighten up with the healing power of stories. Storytelling is our tool for defining a map which heads to the abyss and allows us to restore ourselves. Following this map we can venture deep into the woods to experience the unknown – all our fears – pondering our reality and trying to sort out the things we cannot comprehend. A story is like a magnet dragged through randomness, pulling the chaos of things into some kind of shape and – if we’re very lucky – some kind of sense. The 41st edition of Sulmona International Film Festival aims at encouraging this process of soul searching by presenting forty-eight cinematographic works from eighteen different countries offering a watchful and layered vision. These directors range in their storytelling by facing the most substantial conflicts of our time – declining the present through a deep variety of themes and narrative forms. From generational contrast to the discovery of a sexual identity. From the conflicting energy of the complex teenage to the grievous denial of our fundamental rights. And also reflections on mental health – poetically delivered through animation – and debates about urgent topics such as environmental sustainability. A festival aiming at presenting various and revealing visions. In the firm belief of making cinema as a way of understanding the world – not only through reasoning, but most of all through feelings that can transform images into meanings.

2023 CATALOGUE - SIFF 41

PRIZES 2023

Best international short film

SHADOW BROTHER SUNDAY

by Alden Ehrenreich

For its large dose of humor and drama, allowing the film to highlight the remarkable performances of its actors at their best. It is an amazing directorial debut for the American actor Alden Ehrenreich – probably drawing inspiration from Paul Thomas Anderson, by the use of the 35mm and the soundtrack of “Punch-Drunk Love”. Although clearly referring to one of the masters of American contemporary cinema, he doesn’t seem to make an appropriation. His directing looks simple, tiny yet powerful, inebriant but also dejected.

Best national short film

SCIARABALLA

by Mino Capuano

This short film knows when it is time to leave, to loose. It knows that you can’t tell a story throughout a single scene, but throughout addition and subtraction – thoroughly choosing when to quit and how to narrate. Sciaraballa begins vaguely but becomes persuading as the narration goes ahead. It tells a bittersweet story – with a sensitive and accurate directing – revealing an ungrammatical and ruffled poetic, efficiently aimed at filling a void.

Best national short film

BLACK EYED DOG

by Alessandro Cino Zolfanelli

A piece imprinted of great sensibility, capable of building a considerable strain in terms of style. With a stop-motion production, challenging both for an economic perspective and for its making in itself.

Best documentary short film

JACK AND SAM

by Jordan Matthew Horowitz

A short film that – although in a rhetoric dimension – stands out for its ability to deepen an important matter such as the memory of the Shoah, particularly relevant at the moment due to the Israelian-Palestinian conflict and the recurring and concerning outbreaks of antisemitism all around the world. The film is touching and moving, rousing the sensibility of the audience in a nontrivial way.

Best animated short film

ROSEMARY A.D. (AFTER DAD)

by Ethan Barrett

With its childlike and primordial aesthetics, this short film is capable of capturing the essence of fatherhood throughout an original stream of consciousness – infusing a deep emotional richness into a real story.

Best environmental short film

DONDE LOS NIÑOS NO SUEÑAN

by Stefano Sbrulli

For its report on the dreadful conditions of Cerro de Pasco (in Peru) – one of the most polluted cities in the world. Its storytelling and documentary device accurately balances humanity and tragedy, formality and empathy, fieldwork and poetic detachment.

Best Abruzzo short film

HAPPY NEW YEAR, JIM

by Andrea Gatopoulos

Throughout the experimental language of cyber realism the director represents virtual reality by using its original source without reconstructing it. This approach develops an innovative narration leading the audience to question themselves on the bounders of real world and virtual world.

Best music video

MÉTÉORES

by Agnès Patron & Morgane Le Péchon

A music video standing out for an impacting and original poetic.

SIFF KIDS

MUSHKA

by Andreas Deja

SIFF studenti

THE ONE NOTE MAN

by George C. Siougas

Motivation of the students from Polo Scientifico Tecnologico Enrico Fermi”:
For the great artistic awareness of this short film capable of representing a particular love story throughout the expansion and restraint of time and rhytm, the subversion of a mechanical routine and the evolution of the music – becoming a fil rouge that leads the audience to live this tender and surprising story first-hand.
Motivation of the students from Polo Umanistico “Ovidio”:
The one note man is a very suggestive short film showing how life can change overnight and take a surprising turn. The main character is able to love again after a period of severe mourning, thanks to music that brings people together. The bassoonist protagonist represents a man getting used – almost addicted – to sorrow. The film shows how suffering feeds solitude and turns human beings into automatons, dragging themselves into their daily existence always carrying out the same dull gestures and actions. But something unpredictable changes the game: it is chance, disrupting the routine and presenting a new possibility to the suffering man, reluctant to seizing the opportunity, even if worthy of one. The films looks like a Christmas tale, with a happy ending leading the man to find comfort, joy and hope into someone.

Best directing

Guilherme Daniel

for APPLAUSE

Somewhere between Larrain and Ingmar Bergman – especially for its vivid work on closeups – it is a short film with a powerful directing, extraordinary actors and an interesting and original editing. Its pure cinematic grammar is capable of rendering a performance solely consisting of 14 minutes of applause. Its style employs the applause both as the editing and the soundtrack, finding its unique and original directorial vision.

Best screenplay

Annie-Claude Caron & Danick Audet

for DEAD CAT

An ingenious short film for the way its writing moves within the comedy: every scene presents a solution providing the joy and enthusiasm of sharing the film with other viewers and recounting it at home after watching it for the first time. The dazed tone of the film makes it hard to find the “right timing”, but this is fixed in a hilarious and brilliant way, simple but clever. All this nourishes our expectations on the first feature-film of these two Canadian filmakers, Ugly, already in the working.

Best actress

Afsaneh Dehrouyeh

for YELLOW

Two performances of disarming but overwhelming simplicity – both able to give significance to every line transcending the value of the short films. The bewilderment of their acting is never flaunted but it rather appears to be consistently devastating. With a significant focus on the condition of Afghan women after the privation of their freedom due to the rise of Taliban government in Afghanistan since April of the past year. If Kendra Sow recalls prestigious oriental actresses of the new millennium (such as the ones from Hou Hsiao-hsien to Wong Kar-wai), the Afghan actress Afsaneh Dehrouyeh almost looks like a feminine embodiment of the paintings by Antonello da Messina – also due to the chromatic directing choices with the use of soft and poetic streaks of blue hues.

Best actor

Vincenzo Nemolato

for THE DELAY

For the Buster Keaton-way of the actor of dealing with a story of 15 minutes without never really saying a word. The versatility of its acting is capable of rendering an extremely interesting anachronistic performance, with the actor carrying the entire film on his back. Outdated, in a stubborn and contrary direction opposed to the present, with the precise intention of acting out of time.

Best cinematography

Ben Mullen

for SHADOW BROTHER SUNDAY

For its remarkable use of 35mm, worthy of the master of American contemporary cinema Paul Thomas Anderson.

Best editing

Russell Beeden

for THE ONE NOTE MAN

For its exceptional editing, based on musical scanning and intersection of framing.

Best soundtrack

Fernando Velázquez

for THE LAST CALL

For an impressive and unique sound mix, capable of highlighting with subtlety the familiar and moral emotions of the short film, reaching a real live musical “performance” to support the images and reinforce their effect.

The 41st Sulmona international Film Festival EDITION'S VIDEO

Moments and memories of the 2023 Edition: the Sulmona Film Festival reached the milestone of 41 years

EN