31/03/2021 - The festival is gearing up for a digital 34th edition which will be opened by Bettina Oberli’s Swiss title My Wonderful Wanda

Under the slogan #imKINOdaCASA, the 34th Bolzano Film Festival Bozen (13 - 18 April) is preparing itself to unspool online on account of the pandemic. The opening slot is entrusted to Bettina Oberli’s Swiss title My Wonderful Wanda [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bettina Oberli
film profile], a dramedy presented in a world premiere at Tribeca 2020 and revolving around a Polish woman who upsets the balance of a well-to-do family.

Six films will battle it out for the Autonomous Province of Bolzano Award, presided over by a jury composed of long-term Berlinale consultant Claudia Landsberger, German screenwriter and director Sonja Heiss and Italian independent filmmaker Corrado Ravazzini.

Making its way over from Switzerland is Beyto [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gitta Gsell
film profile] by Zurich director Gitta Gsell, which won the Audience Award at the Solothurn Film Festival and tells the tale of a student who’s a rising star at a swimming club in Berna and who ends up falling for his trainer. The Bolzano-born director working in Vienna Evi Romen, meanwhile, will present her first feature film Why Not You [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which has already claimed victories in a variety of festivals. Hailing from Germany, director Leonie Krippendorff (gracing Variety’s list of “10 European talents to watch in 2020”) will bring Cocoon [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] to Bolzano, a film which opened the Generation section of last year’s Berlinale, while Bolzano director Maura Delpero (who triumphed in 2008 by way of her medium-length work Nadea e Sveta) is set to return to the festival with the Italian-Argentine co-production set in Buenos Aires Maternal [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maura Delpero
film profile]. For his part, Italian director Maurizio Zaccaro will tell the story of Nour [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], a ten-year-old girl who has journeyed across the Mediterranean towards Europe all on her own, and Bolzano director Nancy Camaldo will offer up the German-produced work Windstill.

A jury composed of three experts in the genre field - namely film professor Sven Ilgner, Italian director Michela Occhipinti, and the Viennese director and actress Andrea Schramek - will decide upon the best documentary in competition. Within this category, Luca Lucchesi’s A Black Jesus [+see also:
film review
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film profile] takes us to a small village in southern Italy where a statue of a black Jesus has been worshipped for centuries; Cecilia Mangini and Paolo Pisanelli sign their names to the medium-length work Due scatole dimenticate, which follows the discovery of photographic negatives taking them back to 1964-65, when North Vietnam was at war with the US; the Austrian-produced movie Glory to the Queen [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Tatia Skhirtladze, set in Tbilisi, Georgia, sees four world draughts champions meeting up again after 25 years; Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter tell the tale of Laika, the stray dog who became the first living creature to be sent into space, by way of the Austrian-German co-production Space Dogs [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter
film profile]; Swiss director Ivo Zen explores a village where young people in the 80s and 90s sought refuge in drug addiction in Under Blue Skies [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; and Portuguese director Nuno Escudeiro, a graduate of Bolzano’s ZeLig School, is scheduled to present The Valley [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a documentary set on the border between Italy and France amidst migrants fleeing from war.

Two additional, noteworthy line-ups are likewise confirmed for 2021: Made in Südtirol/Alto Adige, which comprises a selection of 6 international films, partly shot in Italy with the support of the IDM fund, and the workshop intitled Final Touch #6: Intense Feedback from Experts, which will take place online, featuring its 4 selected projects.

(Translated from Italian)