39th Venice International Film Critics' Week Lineup

A few hours ago la Settimana announced the current edition lineup and released their graphic image for 2024.

Just to refresh our memory, La Settimana is an independent and parallel section of La Mostra organized by the Union of Italian Film Critics with a program that includes a selection of seven (7) debut films in competition and three (3) special events out of competition.

The Poster

Mauro Uzzeo creative creation is to my eyes, a near-apocalyptic contemplation of recent past, current present and near future. Check his own words here to find that I'm not that far from what his creative intentions took him to produce the creative idea behind the poster, go official site here. Poster Design is by Fabrizio Verrochhi and Graphic Production by Emiliano Mammucari.

The Official Selection

Settimana Artistic Director, Beatrice Fiorentino, opens her introduction with a transfixing and yet, mesmerizing, wiew of our current times which no doubt are so much related to the poster and well, to what's going on inside my head. Take a look to an excerpt from the first parapraph:

What world, what times are we liging in?
An indecipherable world, an undefined time; filled with uncertainty and unknowns, in which it has become difficult to find our compass and distinguish truth from falsehood, reality from fiction. We are inside an indeterminate present, where the risk -more and more real every day- is we are losing the ability to interpret our reality, almost as if our reference points -the codes by which we used to recognise and define ourselves according to a common language- have become suddenly inadequate, fallacious, contradictory. In such scenario, one step away from the precipice, in a world overflowing with weapons and ravaged wars, with environmental and social imperatives that require immediate and radical change of pace if catastrophe is to be averted, what answers can cinema offer? ...

If you wish to keep on reading, I strongly recommend it, go official site here. Not only she finishes her line of thinking, relates to cinema but also to the official selection of this years' Settimana. Let me just close the enervation I feel about MY recent past, current present and near future with an excerpt of her last paragraph: "It would be paradoxical, and beautiful if, at the very gates of Hell, when every paradigm has been shattered and everything points to the end of times, we should instead transform the perfect storm into a new beginning. Into Rebirth".

Brava Beatrice Fiorentino, grazie mille per le belle (e terribile) parole, mi ha dato molto da pensare acerca dei mio hieri, oggi e domani.

Now let's go back to cinema and to the films that will be in the 2024 edition of La Settimana, which will rum from August 28 to September 7, 2024.

Feature Films

Competition

Anywhere Anytime, Milad Tangshir, Italy
Homegrown, Michael Premo, USA (documentary)
Mưa trên cánh bướm (Don't Cry, Butterfly), Dương Diệu Linh, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia
No Sleep Till, Alexandra Simpson, USA and Switzerland
Paul and Paulette Take a Bath, Jethro Massey, UK
Peacock, Bernhard Wenger, Austria and Germany
Moattar binanaa (Perfumed With Mint), Muhammed Hamdy, Egypt, France and Tunisia

Special Events
Opening Film: Planète B (Planet B), Aude Léa Rapin, France and Belgium
Closing Film: Little Jaffna, Lawrence Valin, France

Short Films

Competition

At Least I Will Be 8 294 400 Pixel, Marco Talarico, Italy, 15'
Billi il cowboy (Cowboy Billi), Fede Gianni, Italy, 14'
Nero argento (Black Silver), Francesco Manzato, Italy, 20'
Phantom, Gabriele Manzoni, Italy, 17'
Playing God, Matteo Burani, Italy and France, 9' (animation)
Sans Dieu, Alessandro Rocca, Italy, 10'
Things That My Best Friend Lost, Marta Innocenti, Italy, 15'

Special Events
Opening Short Films
The Eggregores' Theory, Andrea Gatopoulos, Italy 15'
Dark Globe, Donato Sannsone, Italy and France 4'
Closing Short Film: Domenica Sera (Sunday Night), Matteo Tortone, Italy 16'

Official Selection Presentation Video