From the 12th to the 19th of March, Spazio Oberdan in Milan hosts the 24th edition of “Sguardi Altrove International Film Festival”, devoted to female cinema and artistic expression. This year’s theme is “Women’s Empowerment: Working to Overcome Gender Inequality“, and it focuses on the delicate topic of gender balace in contemporary society, also through intercultural dialogue and critical confrontation with “other” cinematic arts.
Program’s preview
The festival will open with the Italian preview of Certain Women, that had a major success at the London Film Festival 2016, directed by American film director Kelly Reichardt, featuring Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern and Lily Gladstone. The film is a screen adaptation of three short stories by Maile Meloy and portraits the stories of four women very different from one another, that tries to find their way on the background of the infinite plains of the American North-West.
The festival will feature also a retrospective on Maren Ade‘s work, prominent filmmaker of the contemporary German cinema, with the Italian preview of her first three full-lenght films. Starting from The forest for the trees (2003), debut movie on alienation and inability to adjust, winning of the Jury Prize at Sundance 2003; and Everyone Else (2009) on rituals, secrets and frustrations of a couple during one summer, that won two Silver bears at Berlinale 2009. Closes the homage to this brillant German director the award-winning Toni Erdmann (2016), 5 European Oscar winner, eccentric comedy that describes with delicacy, grace and irony the difficult relation between a father and his daughter.
Other sections
The non competitive section “Human Rights” features two Italian works, with the preview screening of Portami via by Marta Santamato Cosentino, intimate portrait of the journey of Jamal and his Syrian family, from prison and tortures under the Assad regime to a new beginning in Italy, and Lost children. Thirty thousand minors missing by Chiara Sambuchi, investigative-film on the trade of migrant minors that travel alone from Middle East and Africa to Europe. According to the authorities, at least 10.000 of them simply vanished along the way, but other sources reports a number even three times higher.
Among the off-contest special screening, is worth mentioning another American work, The Love Witch, written and directed by Anna Biller, an ironic horror-thriller that pays homage to the b-movies from the ’60s. Successfully presented at the last Torino Film Festival, the movie features as main character Elaine (Samantha Robinson), a young and attractive witch that will do anything to find true love.
The full program is still in progress. To stay up to date with the news, please visit the official website: www.sguardialtrovefilmfestival.it
