20/11/2024 - Swiss filmmaker Eleonora Camizzi presents a tender, inquisitive and personal debut feature about family and schizophrenia

After serving as an editor on a number of projects, Swiss filmmaker Eleonora Camizzi makes her feature-length documentary debut in IDFA’s Envision Competition, with a film called Pictures in Mind [+see also:
trailer
interview: Eleonora Camizzi
film profile]. It takes an experimental and rather theatrical approach to staging a conversation between the director and her father, Vincenzo. In a white room with little to no shadow, brightly but warmly lit, the two talk. Between them is a window with a view out over a still, turquoise sea. Yet, this is not an easy encounter to manage, calibrate or stage, as Camizzi poses to her father the questions she struggled to ask until now because of his schizophrenia and the concomitant difficulties in bridging their sometimes starkly different perceptions of the world. Mediating this process is Pictures in Mind.

Working with a small crew, Camizzi ensured the film’s intimate qualities would not spill over into the very minimalistic set. The aforementioned white walls, the sea-view window, and the inconspicuous white clothes that both she and her father wear strip their encounter of all external signifiers; it all invites the viewer to meet them afresh, with no preconceptions. But the real question is, can they do it themselves? Three static cameras facilitate their verbal exchanges as conversations start in medias res and end abruptly, when it all gets too much. Vincenzo is lucid, and Eleonora is remarkably calm, so the few moments when concealed trauma punctures their perfectly friendly conversations about the past, his diagnosis and his treatment feel like a tectonic shift.

“Were you afraid of me?” Vincenzo asks, and Eleonora looks at him in silence. In the next shot, we see her walking around the room without saying anything: the lack of response lingers heavy in the air. Pictures in Mind is a rare example of how a deeply personal film benefits greatly from an experimental approach because it holds honesty in the highest regard. Perhaps there was a private impetus for this film so as to craft the circumstances where certain family conversations could be had, but the finished movie impresses with its tenderness. By focusing on the possibility of having a conversation on a stigmatised psychological condition, it also offers a gentle, inquisitive look into mental health, rather than mental illness. Camizzi’s work is not only anti-stigma; it’s also committed to crafting a space where the personal and the social can meet without the extra burden they are forced to carry. Even isolated in its setting, Pictures in Mind leaves an impression of a shareable experience and an inviting, generous way of looking.

Pictures in Mind is a Swiss production by am Limit and is currently looking for world sales representation.