THE LARGE DOCUMENTARIES OF THE TWO BIOGRAFILM FESTIVAL COMPETITIONS

from 5 al 15 June, Biografilm Festival will be online and from 1st June it will be possible to book a place in the festival's virtual room, by accessing the site www.mymovies.it and creating an account. It will be possible to enjoy the vision during the 24 hours after the start of the screening.

The films and meetings with the authors of the Biografilm Festival will be available for free, in the original language with Italian subtitles, for all people who connect to the platform from Italian territory. More information will be available on the website biografilm.it in the next days.

Biografilm Festival takes place with the contribution of the Department of Culture and Landscape of the Emilia-Romagna Region.

The unmissable selection of documentaries in competition

The two competitive sections of the Biografilm Festival, as always, they present the best of the current documentary production.

Biografilm Festival Italia focuses on Italian production films, giving space to the most interesting and innovative works, proposing a non-obvious and multifaceted reading of today's Italy. Through the gaze and sensitivity of the authors and authors, we meet powerful stories, particular and universal.

The International Competition collects the most fascinating and awaited documentaries from all over the world, Italy included. The films selected for this section offer us new perspectives on lives, worlds and events worth knowing.

The titles and synopsis of Biografilm Festival Italia

The house of love (The House of Love), by Luca Ferri (Italy, 2020, 77′), Italian preview

Bianca is a transsexual from 39 years. Lives in Milan since 2009 and is a prostitute by profession. For twenty years she has been engaged to Natasha, a Japanese-born trans who lives temporarily in Brazil. Their bond is very strong and the distance has not weakened it. The film tells their love story made of long phone calls and even longer waits. For work and family matters they haven't seen each other for almost two years. Time spent without Natasha is marked by customers, mostly habitual, and their requests. Over time Bianca has also become attached to them but her thoughts are always for Natasha, that is finally coming back.

In a Future April (In a Future April), by Francesco Costabile and Federico Savonitto (Italy, 2019, 80′), Italian preview

A journey to discover the youthful years of Pier Paolo Pasolini, through the voice of his cousin, the writer and poet Nico Naldini. During the 1940s the young Pier Paolo Pasolini lived in Casarsa, in Friuli, in his mother's country. The history of that period is told by Nico Naldini, poet and cousin of Pasolini. Pier Paolo's life flows through Nico's voice, revealing two inevitably connected paths of life. Both, in those years, they absorb the aesthetic and erotic violence of an unknown world, which reveals itself in its crude reality: a universe that will influence all of Pasolini's subsequent work.

Our way (Our Road),by Pierfrancesco The Women (Italy, 2020, 70′), world premiere

Daniel, Simone and Desirée live in a middle ground dominated by change and uncertainty, divided between not being anymore and not yet being. They attend the final year of middle school in the ward school, in via Colonna Rotta, a street in the heart of Palermo. The neighborhood is a cage, but at thirteen, life is an adventure to go through. Between school and work, first loves and family, the protagonists face adolescence in search of their way.

The ball on the basin (A Marble on a Dell), by Francesca Iandiorio (Italy, 2020, 60′), world premiere

Francesca is experiencing a particularly critical phase of her life, his complicated relationship with food and a distorted perception of his body feed his insecurities and fears. To face such a difficult moment he decides to film himself and tell himself in an autobiographical film. Thus began a complicated journey to discover herself and the world around her, which will bring her for the first time to get closer and get to know the baby side of the mother, and to confront Dario in a new way, the illustrator boyfriend, who often uses her designs to help her overcome her difficulties.

Word of honor (Sons of Honour), by Sophia Luvarà (Italy, Netherlands, 2020, 84′), world premiere

In the most violent region of Italy a courageous judge fights against the 'ndrangheta by removing the bosses' teenage children from their families. The Judge Di Bella, in his role as president of the juvenile court of Reggio Calabria, he sentenced boys involved in drug trafficking and murder. They are children of fathers with heavy names, destined for a life in prison or killed in bloody feuds. Judge Di Bella believes that there is an alternative for these children too and with the 'Free to choose' program, he wants to offer a way out for the boys destined to replace their fathers and uncles within the ranks of the fierce criminal society.

Sqizo, by Duccio Fabbri (Italy, United States, 2020, 70′), world premiere

The story of Louis Wolfson, Bronx writer, who has struggled all his life against current definitions of mental illness, luck and language. Diagnosed schizophrenic in adolescence, he repudiated his mother tongue in favor of a completely personal idiom. Cult author in Paris in the seventies, in the United States he remained a perfect stranger, inveterate gambler, homeless, absolute outsider. In mature age he moved to Puerto Rico, where his luck changed suddenly and where the author of the film tracked him down: a 89 years still lives alone and suspended between two worlds, that of silence and that of the word.

Tuttinsieme (All Together), by Marco Simon Puccioni (Italy, 2020, 82′), world premiere

The intimate dialogue between two fathers who reflect on the growth of their twins, they remember how their children worked out, in different ages, living in a family with two fathers. Relive the climate of strong opposition in which Monica Cirinnà managed to give Italy a law on civil unions. They cultivate the warm and affectionate relationship with the American families who allowed the birth of their children. They return to the moment of celebration of the civil union celebrated by Nichi Vendola and search, between different sensitivities, the names to give to people of extended families born with assisted procreation techniques.

West of Babylonia, by Emanuele Mengotti (Italy, 2020, 82′), world premiere

In the Californian desert there is a place called Slab City; a set of campers, caravan, tents and baseless buildings built on the borders of a military base where explosive devices are tested. In Slab City you live without running water and without electricity. The roads are unpaved and the population (the "Slabber") swings between 400 people in the summer and 4.000 in the winter one. Slabber are young and old, hippies and neo-nazis, outlaws and artists. All united by the desire to be free and not to respond to the rules of American society. All that is outside of Slab City for them is "Babylonia".

The titles and synopsis of the International Biografilm Festival Competition 2020:

Barzakh (Barzani), Say Alejandro Salgado (Spain, 2019, 72′), Italian preview

For Islamic culture, Barzakh represents an intermediate world, a phase of transition between life and life physical death. A space that lies between hell and paradise. A true non-place, real. Anyone who enters it will be put to trial, but he will not know what the fate of his destiny will be. Barzakh tells this phantasmagoric world. At the center of the story is a group of kids trapped between two worlds: Morocco, the hell they think they're running from, and Europe, the paradise in which they hope to land. The real challenge is the space that separates them. And stay alive until evening. And fear. Waking up in the middle of the night to embrace a new day away from any shelter. And look at the life you want, in silence.

Because of My Body, by Francesco Cannavà (Italy, 2020, 83′), world premiere

Due to a severe motor disability, Claudia cannot move freely and is assisted by her mother. A twenty-one is still a virgin and wonders what pleasure is. One day a lovegiver arrives in his life, a man who provides help to people with disabilities to discover the body and sexuality. Followed by a team of specialists, the two begin a cycle of increasingly intimate encounters. The project foresees a protocol with a difficult to apply rule: forbidden to fall in love.

The Earth Is Blue as an Orange (Zemlia is pale as an appeal), at Iryna Tsilyk (Ukraine, Lithuania, 2020, 74′), Italian preview

Awarded at the Sundance Film Festival 2020 for the best direction in the World Cinema Documentary category. Anna, single mother, together with his four children, he lives on the border of the Donbas war zone, in Ukraine. Although the outside world is full of bombings and chaos, their home remains a safe haven, full of joy and vitality. The passion of all family members for cinema, urges them to film some scenes of their daily life during the war period. For Anna and her children, converting trauma into art is the best way to stay human.

Ecstasy (Ecstasy), by Moara Passoni (United States, Brazil, 2020, 72′), Italian preview

Brazil, the nineties, a chaotic political landscape. Clara is tormented by anxiety and finds comfort starving one's body. It makes fasting an experience of extreme pleasure and suffering. In this experimental docufiction based on the real secret diaries of women suffering from anorexia, for the protagonist, illness becomes a way to face adulthood and to find her place in an uncertain world, brutal, surreal.

Faith, by Valentina Pedicini (Italy, 2019, 93′), Italian preview

An isolated monastery in the Italian hills. A master of kung fu. A community of Christian monks with a touch of oriental disciplines. One faith: fight evil in the name of the Father. Warrior Monks, former martial arts champions, for twenty years they have been preparing for a "higher" war, between night prayers and exhausting workouts. A poetic and emotional journey into an unknown world, a film to investigate the deep motivations of a radical choice, the reasons for devotion. What are you willing to lose, to win in the name of faith?

It Takes a Family (The shadows we inherit), di Susanne Kovács (Denmark, 2019, 59′), Italian preview

It Takes A Family it is the story of the suffocated secrets and memories of Susanne and her family. Susanne Kovács, director and protagonist of the work, he is the grandson of a Jewish couple who survived the Holocaust, daughter of German mother and Jewish-Danish father. In the eyes of grandparents, Susanne's birth is a constant reminder of her tragic past, she is the daughter of the enemy. Years after, Susanne begins to ask questions and then finds out that within her troubled family there is a war that has never seen an end. Somehow the horrors of the past have always been present. The trauma is deafening and yet remains unspoken.

King of the Cruise, di Sophie Over (Netherlands, 2019, 74′), Italian preview

The baron of Inneryne, Ronald Busch Reisinge, he spends his time on luxury ships, in the company of couples in love, wealthy families, hardworking staff and retired seniors. We follow the baron on one of these ships, while parading in feudal clothes and royal cloaks, that at first glance make him arrogant, vain. He is proud of his status, of his wealth and his extravagant life. Yet there is something authentic under all its bravado: the universal human desire to feel accepted and appreciated.

Noodle Kid (La yi wan mian), di Huo Ning (China, 2019, 107′), Italian preview

Thousands of Chinese Hui every year, a mainly Muslim people from Qinghai, western China province, they go to work in noodles restaurants all over China. This also went for 14-year-old Ma Xiang, forced to drop out of school to pay his father's debts. For Ma Xiang, happiness lies in the memories of the short moments spent with her mother. Now it's hard to find that sense of peace, addressing unexpected differences between his hometown and an unknown outside world, as well as the challenges and difficulties of life. This small noodles restaurant will offer a new start to its path to happiness?

Sing Me a Song, by Thomas Balmès (France, Germany, Switzerland, 2019, 99′), Italian preview

Young Peyangki lives and studies in a picturesque monastery nestled in the mountains of Bhutan. For some years the king has allowed the use of television and the internet, so the traditional habits, the light of candles and the recitation of prayers must now compete with the new power of smartphones and connection. In private, Peyangki is passionate about love songs, and falls in love with WeChat on a young singer from Thimphu. Not interested in studies, scolded by the masters, starts selling natural medicines, in order to earn enough to leave the monastery in search of the only person who dreams day and night. It will yield to the romance and temptations of the city, or return to his chaste life in the monastery?

This Train I Ride, by Arno Bitschy (France, Finland, 2019, 77′), Italian preview

United States of America, present tense. Freight trains run through the landscape, crawling like giant iron snakes. Ivy, Karen and Christina leave everything behind, defying the danger to cross the country, aboard these trains. They are waiting for them to pass, hidden in the bushes, sleeping under the freeway bridges. Between the noise of the rails and the screech of the metal beast, the director becomes the travel companion of the three women. During the journey by rail, and wherever fate can lead them, their trajectories cross and echo: the desire to live, spiritual research, eternal rebellion. Stronger than society, stronger than men: they are free.

Wake Up on Mars (Awakening on Mars), di Dea Gjinovci (France, Switzerland, 2020, 74′), Italian preview

A ten-year-old Roma boy living in Sweden tries to come to terms with a mysterious illness, the so-called Resignation Syndrome, who reduced his two sisters to a coma. His family, very united and close-knit, is trying to rebuild a normal life, far from the persecution experienced in the country of origin, Kosovo. While the future of the family remains suspended, pending confirmation of approval of the asylum request, young Furkhan dreams of being able to build a spacecraft, on which to leave to leave everything behind.

Walchensee Forever, di Janna Ji Wonders (Germany, 2020, 110′), Italian preview

Family saga in the documentary directed by Janna Ji Wonders, who embarks on a journey back in time. Starting from the family-run restaurant on the banks of Lake Walchensee, in Southern Bavaria, arriving at the "Summer of Love" lived in the 60s with his sister in San Francisco, Janna goes to discover the family secrets to trace the different personalities that make up her generational tree. A timeless family history on the search for one's identity, on personal fulfillment, about love, pain, addiction, lost, psychosis, birth and death. A film about the cycle of life.