Betty, a famous brasilian 'telenovelas' star, is in search of her twin sister Marlene, who vanished when the kids were four years old (Marlene is now a prostitute). Fragments of other stories, like that of an italian traveller Filippo who left in Italy Giuli, pregnant, and claims to have a split-personality, are inter-twined with the main one
Irene moves to Paris to begin a new life with her husband Jason and their two daughters, but an act of betrayal and her desire for revenge soon sends her to the brink of madness.
The film is a rendition of Resurrection, Tolstoy’s last novel. It begins with a reading of the beginning of the first part in Naples, in September 2012. It moves on to Berlin, Locarno 2013, Oneglia, Paris, Casalborgone, and it ends in Milan with the beginning of the second part. The places and times change, and so do the people doing the reading. But also, in the middle, real people and voices surface, like Adamo Vergine at his home and Jean François Neplaz in Marseilles. The film searches for the possible faces of Tolstoy’s two protagonists in Oneglia, Procida, and Casalborgone.
A film commissioned by the Centre Pompidou, where the director captures moments of his daily life and of his relatives.
A young woman wanders down an endless corridor, while other people knock at a door at night. A man takes a picture of Montmartre, two women hand him some money, while a patron manages from rue de Mhyra a network of Italian call girls. Adiba sings an ancient Moroccan song in a room full of children, while Vidya is performing her daily puja in Pune (India). Giuli sings to herself as she drives at night through Turin and runs to the station at day. Parallel stories where every character is caught “in a situation,” closed.
A woman in her flooded kitchen thinks of Ophelia and death by drowning. A nun wonders about her vocation. A girl, dumb by choice, walks around in Naples. A ballerina in a wheelchair. Three youths around a bonfire in a little island. A man secluded in a tower waiting for the end of the world. And many other stories.
Three young women at home, the eye of the camera doesn't leave them for a moment and shows them first in a narrow kitchen, then in a small bathroom in front of a mirror, then in a bare living room where they spend part of the evening. The three are the mistress of the house and her servants, and the film is based on Les Bonnes by Genet. The servants pretend to unite to varying degrees against their mistress, and she, in turn, pretends to be a mistress who doesn't give explicit orders but who makes herself admired anyway. Each one of them plays the part that is most congenial to her.
Bogre is a journey into time and space, on the trail of Cathars, Albigenses and Bogomils, medieval heretics who spread from Bulgaria to the European West. Why Bogre? Those who speak the Occitan language know that bogre (pronounced “bugre”) means Bulgarian, but over the centuries that word has acquired the meaning of foolish, the one who masks the truth. In the 12 th century, bogre became an insult directed towards the Occitan Cathars, who were equated to the Bulgarian Bogomils, from whom the Western Catharism derived. The followers of these heretical teachings called each other “good people” and “good christians” because they believed they were returning christianity to its original purity. Their ideas traveled the length and breadth of Europe, from the Balkans to the Pyrenees, from center-northern Italy to Bosnia.
Husband and wife Carlo and Grazia make bread in their wood-burning oven and also distribute it to the sellers. They work all night long, every day of the week, as their families used to do. They live in Gorgiti, a village in Tuscany, on the mountains near Arezzo. On the other hand, in Rome, some young people live near Camellia's Square at Centocelle, in the suburbs. We see them at different moments in their lives. Their existences seem to belong to distant and very different universes. There seems to be an irreconcilable generation conflict. The film makes use of documentary and fiction, but tries to amalgamate them while simultaneously using them as opposites.
Portraits of women, stories from their past and their present as prostitutes working between Italy and France (and Brazil). Women who used to think they were lost, and men just as lost as them.
A video by Tonino De Bernardi
A film in seven chapters. A documentary overwhelmed by life. A story with no plot. A trip. From the countryside to cities, from Italy to India to Greece. Through the ages and generations, through the work of farmers and the exploitation of migrant bodies. In the end, the singing and music lead you elsewhere, to the pleasure of discovery.
This film tells three different love stories, or alleged love stories, or, nevertheless, stories of sentimental relationships set in the Lazio countryside, Rome, and Naples. This is the reiteration - in different days and in different places - of an encounter among three people that (perhaps) may turn out to be fatal.
A video by Tonino De Bernardi
A Neopolitan hustler named Antonello is living his life in Torino. He turns tricks as a transvestite, using the name Rosatigre, or more commonly, Rosa. His closest pal is Wanda, who exercises the same “profession” and, being his best friend, is also the incarnation of his feminine alter ego. While we watch the two of them hanging out on the street, sweet and carefree as the young Moll Flanders, we eavesdrop on their exchange of confidences and learn the secret details of their private lives. Wanda could have been a teacher but she preferred the street, where she can indulge her sentimental, dreamy nature in sighing over the "Americano" she once met in Naples, for whom she still carries a torch.
“Why did you kill her?” Lou asks Philippe again. The life-odyssey of Joana, a modern-day Moll Flanders, continues as she moves through different times and places, like the stations of a personal via crucis, with occasional leaps into the present. From Paris to Rome and on to São Paulo. The body has lost every value, except the economic one.
Italian director Tonino De Bernardi, a regular guest at IFFR, filmed on the Greek island Evia (or Euboea) during the refugee crisis. Many immigrants arrived on the Greek islands, as well as in Italy. De Bernardi also filmed the border town Ventimiglia, where refugees play football and queue up for aid in a parking lot.
