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TURIN 2017 Torino Film Industry

The 10th anniversary of TorinoFilmLab is all about women

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- Almost all of the filmmakers focused on female leads in the projects presented at the 2017 Meeting Event. Jessica Woodworth, Rok Bicek, Franco Lolli and Carlo Sironi were among the participants

The 10th anniversary of TorinoFilmLab is all about women
Jessica Woodworth presents her new project, Fortress, at TorinoFilmLab

There are twenty-two projects in the initial development phase, twelve at the more advanced and flexible production award stage and more than 30 countries represented internationally, including China, Indonesia, Vietnam. But among the titles presented at the TorinoFilmLab programs, ScriptLab and FeatureLab, there was almost exclusively one topic on the menu: women. Be them young, old, working women, daughters, mothers: the new directors participating in Turin want to tell "female" stories, maybe more so than the female filmmakers themselves. "It's a strong theme in this edition, which surprised us," says Savina Neirotti, director of TFL, "there is a profound reflection on women - men are beginning to look at us differently. A process of knowledge is at the heart of real dialogue. And considering recent tensions, if the artistic world is reflecting on this relationship, it means we are headed in the right direction."

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Mothers, in particular, were the focus of numerous projects presented at the TFL Meeting Event 2017 (24 to 25 November, as part of the 35th Turin Film Festival), the Turin Film Development and Financing Lab – focusing mainly on first and second releases – will be celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Amparo [+see also:
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by Simón Mesa Soto (Colombia/Sweden) and the dark comedy You Are My Everything by Israeli director Michal Vinik both focus on mothers seeking to get around their children's military service, while a mother desperately searches for her daughter who has been kidnapped by a violent drug cartel in La Civil by Teodora Ana Mihai (Belgium/Romania). Another mother finally finds the person responsible for her daughter's death, 35 years later, in the Dutch film Mitra [+see also:
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by Kaweh Modiri. The German film Pelican Blood by Katrin Gebbe focuses on a mother trying to create an impossible bond with her adopted daughter, and the Franco-Colombian production The Defendant, the second feature by Franco Lolli (multi-award-winning director of Gente de bien [+see also:
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), focuses on a single mother living in a patriarchal society. Alpha by Una Gunjak (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Croatia, France) tells the story of a mother who leaves Bosnia for Italy to provide her daughter with a better future.

The German-Italian title Zorro, the second feature by Ronny Trocker (The Eremites [+see also:
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last year in Venice), talks more about family in general, in which the internal conflicts of a bourgeois family bubble over following a robbery that each family members chooses to perceive differently. And it's the destructive power of familial love that Danish Jeanette Nordahl deals with in Wildland [+see also:
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, which focuses on a family of criminals. In the Bulgarian Nights and Days by Konstantin Bojanov (Ave [+see also:
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interview: Konstantin Bojanov
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), a child flees his narcissistic mother, the protagonist of a feature promising a Michael Haneke-style atmosphere. While the Greek feature Selene66 by Jacqueline Lentzou focuses on a daughter who discovers her father's homosexuality at the end of his life. Sole [+see also:
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by Carlo Sironi (the short film Valparaiso) talks about surrogate motherhood and fatherhood, questioning what it really means to become parents.

Dark Mother Earth, the second feature by Slovenian Rok Bicek(following Class Enemy [+see also:
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interview: Rok Bicek
interview: Rok Bicek
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, awarded in Venice) focuses on friendship and betrayal, in a film in which a child is accused of eight suicides in his village, while yet another woman is at the centre of Sweat, the latest feature by the Swedish director residing in Poland, Magnus von Horn, focusing on a fitness instructor, avid social media fan, and prey to a stalker. 

This year there are also some film adaptations of literary works on the cards, including Jessica Woodworth's adaptation of The Tartar Steppe by the Italian writer Dino Buzzati. The Belgian-American director, who is a companion of Peter Brosens (Khadak [+see also:
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interview: Jessica Woodworth
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, Altiplano [+see also:
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, The Fifth Season [+see also:
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interview: Jessica Woodworth
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, King of the Belgians [+see also:
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interview: Jessica Woodworth, Peter Br…
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, with the shooting their new film, The Barefoot Emperor planned for 2018 in Croatia) has brought her sixth solo feature film project to Turin, Fortress, which will be set in the endless landscapes of Armenia. A touch of fantasy, finally, with the Italian project Small Body by Laura Samani, set in Gothic North-eastern Italy in the early 1900s, and Red Mercury by the French Willam Laboury, which focuses on magic and technology.

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(Translated from Italian)

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