03/10/2023 - Between 3 and 8 October, the fourth edition of the festival revolving around the world of work will showcase 65 films from 31 countries and host a focus on Laurent Cantet

The fourth edition of Job Film Days - an event homing in on the world of work and rights which will showcase 65 films from 31 countries until 8 October, as well as hosting a focus on French filmmaker Laurent Cantet - is kicking off today in the Cinema Massimo housed within Turin’s National Film Museum. The opening slot of the festival directed by Annalisa Lantermo is entrusted to July Jung’s Korean movie Next Sohee.

The first movie battling it out in the “Work 20223” JFD – INAIL Competition, dedicated to documentary and fiction feature films, is The Visitors [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Veronika Lisková (Czech Republic/Norway/Slovakia), which previously earned itself a Special Mention in Ji.hlava 2022. The film follows an anthropologist who relocates with her husband and three children to the Svalbard Islands in Norway, to study the ways in which life has changed in the polar regions. But the scholar doesn’t only learn about the icebergs and permafrost that are disappearing in the Arctic, she also discovers the diversity within the small local community and the tensions that hide beneath the surface.

Likewise jostling in competition is The DNA of Dignity [+see also:
film review
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film profile] (Switzerland), a first, self-produced work by Swiss director Jan Baumgartner, set in the Nineties when the Balkan War has led to the disappearance of thousands of people, and following the work carried out by those who have set themselves the mission of looking for and identifying victims of the conflict. There’s also the Italian-French-German co-production Il posto – A Steady Job [+see also:
film review
interview: Gianluca Matarrese and Matt…
film profile], directed by Gianluca Matarrese and Mattia Colombo, about the thousands of nurses from southern Italy who have to sit an exam every month in order to win one of the few positions available in the country’s northern healthcare facilities, and another Italian production, Life Is a Game, by Luca Quagliato and Laura Carrer, which was shot at night-time on the streets of various European cities and which sees interviews with thirteen delivery drivers interspersed with the story told by Emma, an animated character who foregrounds the highs and the lows for those working in the field of home food deliveries.

The 7 titles in competition also include Jannes Callens’ medium-length film Longing (Belgium/Romania), in which the director follows a man who leaves Belgium to return to his birth country, Romania, to start his life over, taking up work as a shepherd; Lola Peuch’s medium-length movie Faire le bois (France), about three sex workers hailing from different paths and countries who have made Paris’s Bois de Boulogne their place of work; and another medium-length film Ama osa (Italy) by Latvia’s Marija Stefānija Linuža, which revolves around young Naomi who sets herself up as a camgirl in order to earn a bit of money and who subsequently starts to use her body in a mindful way as an act of artistic and political reflection.

The festival is also hosting a competition for short films by directors under 35, the Job for the Future Prize offering up 11 works from various European countries, and a focus on Sub Saharan Africa showcasing four films: A Golden Life [+see also:
film review
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film profile] by Boubacar Sangaré (Burkina Faso/Benin/France); Eat Bitter by Pascale-Appora Gnekindi and Ningyi Sun (Central African Republic/China); Gwetto by Michaël Andrianaly (Madagascar/France); and No U-Turn [+see also:
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film profile] by Ike Nnaebue (Nigeria/South Africa/France/Germany).

(Translated from Italian)