The Venice 2023 program on Thursday features two other films in competition: the Italian Lubo directed by Giorgio Diritti and Holly.
Italian cinema continues to be the protagonist Venezia 2023 thanks to Giorgio Diritti and his film Luboone of the two titles in competition on Thursday.
Today’s program will instead end with Daaaaaali!the fun new work by Quentin Dupieux.
The films in competition
The first of the two proposals in competition today is Holly, directed by Fien Troch. At the center of the plot is a fifteen-year-old who stays home from school. Soon after, a fire breaks out in the institute in which several students die.
The entire community, affected by the tragedy, comes together to seek consolation. Anna, one of her teachers, is fascinated by Holly’s strange premonition and invites her to join her group of volunteers. Holly’s mere presence conveys tranquility, warmth and hope. But soon everyone wants to meet her and feel the cathartic energy that emanates from her, asking the girl for more and more.
Giorgio Diritti instead wrote Lubo, the story of a street artist who in 1939 was called into the Swiss army to defend the national borders from the risk of a German invasion. A short time later he discovers that his wife has died in an attempt to prevent the gendarmes from taking away their three young children, who, as Jenisch, were torn from the family, according to the national re-education program for street children (Hilfswerk für the Kinder der Landstrasse). Lubo knows that he will no longer have peace until he finds his children and obtains justice for his story and that of all those who are different like him.
Out of competition
Virginia Eleuteri Serpieri is the director of Amor, a project inspired by her life and the decision made by her mother to commit suicide. The abyss swallows her and her daughter Virginia, in the darkness of the night, crosses Rome: she wants to find her and save her. Virginia must cross the depths of the waters, of history, of myths, of disasters and of the vital flashes of a timeless Rome. So he can see his mother again emerging from the darkness of the Tiber to fly towards AMOR, “the planet of care” surrounded by water and where the streets, squares, fountains recall those of Rome and the animals are free to move around .
Quentin Dupieux is the director and screenwriter of Daaaaaali!, a film starring Anaïs Demoustier, Gilles Lellouche, Édouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Pio Marmaï, Didier Flamand, Romain Duris.
On the screen we witness the surreal attempts made by an aspiring French journalist to make a documentary film on the artist Salvador Dali.
Adagio, Comandante, the return of Liliana Cavani: the Italian films of the 2023 Venice Film Festival
Horizons
In the Orizzonti section, Heaven Burns is shown, a film directed by Mika Gustafson. In a working-class neighborhood in Sweden, sisters Laura (sixteen years old), Mira (twelve years old) and Steffi (seven years old) manage on their own, abandoned to their electronic devices by an absent mother. With summer coming and no parents around, life is wild and carefree, lively and anarchic. But when social services call a meeting, Laura must find someone to pose as their mother, or the girls will be placed in foster care and separated. Laura keeps the threat a secret so as not to worry her younger sisters but, as the moment of truth approaches, new tensions arise, forcing the three sisters to walk the thin line that divides the euphoria of total freedom from the harsh reality of growth.
Authors’ Days
The last film in competition of this edition is the comedy The Summer with Carmen, directed by Zacharias Mavroeidis, about two young people intent on writing the film of their lives.
At the Notti Veneziani, Casablanca by Adriano Valerio is screened, which follows the love story of Fouad and Daniela. The man is the son of the Imam of a working class neighborhood in Casablanca, he has been in Italy without documents for ten years and awaiting medical treatment. She comes from an upper-class Apulian family.