11/07/2005

Vento di terra [+see also:
trailer
film profile], from the Italian Vincenzo Marra was one of the last films screened in competition at this year’s Brussels European Film Festival. After the critical success of his first feature, Tornando a casa (2001) and two documentaries, Estranei alla massa(2001) and Paesaggio a sud(2003), Vincenzo Marra came to Belgium to present his second feature [read the interview] which has won him prizes here, there and everywhere, notably at Festival Premiers Plans at Angers this year, the Prize 'Jean Carmet', best European newcomer for Vincenzo Pacilli, a young non professionnel actor (outstanding), and also the Fipresci Prize, a Special Mention and the Prize Francesco Pasinetti (for the most innovative film) in the section Orizzonti at Venice last year.

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Vento di Terra is not exactly innovative, fitting perfectly into the realist vein of Italian cinema. Composed of fragments of a rough reality, it follows the destiny of a young man, Enzo, with an imposing young body, mutic face, who, following the death of his father, must take charge of the family. Some wide angles of brutal faces dignified, silent faces ; a montage of the run-down Naples suburb, leaving the characters all alone under an empty sky. Slices of real time, non professionnal actors, elliptical narratives which weigh heavily on each one of them, on their choices as the sequences that follow demonstrate, the film, minimalist and silent, assembles a mesh of relations, each one more harrassing than the others. Resigned, Enzo, however, carries on, in a silent struggle with his destiny. And Vento di terra watches a boy become a man, free, if he chooses to be.

Sold by Films Distribution internationally, the film was produced by R&C Produzioni, with a contribution from the Italian Ministery of Culture. Released in Italy last September, it is distributed by Mikado and should come out in France thanks to Films du Paradoxe.

(Translated from French)