An urgency to examine the times in which we’re living, war and exile, but also love, family and individual memory which becomes part of the collective conscience, are just a few of the themes running through the intriguing 2025 selection pulled together by artistic director Gaia Furrer for the Giornate degli Autori event, which promises to be particularly intense from an emotional point of view, according to this morning’s announcement in Rome. The 22nd edition of the independent, parallel section unspooling within the Venice International Film Festival (running 27 August – 6 September) will showcase a total of 25 titles hailing from 20 countries from around the globe. Ten will screen in competition, 1 closing film will be showcased out of competition and 5 will be treated to special event screenings, in addition to the 9 titles (majority Italian productions) selected for Venice Nights and the 2 short films chosen for the Miu Miu Women’s Tales project. “They’re all films which speak to one another other, and with us, to give us an idea of what the world is like at this historic, difficult moment in time”, Furrer explains, “but over and above an almost striking similarity of themes, they’re films which dazzled with their formal eclecticism, whether documentaries, fiction films, radical films and other more accessible works”.

Never before have the event’s selected films so strongly represented the idea of “the personal being political”. A first work (one of many in the selection) is set to open the Competition section: Memory by Vladlena Sandu, which is a poetic, autobiographical film in which the director looks back to when she was 6, after her parents’ divorce, when she moved from Crimea to Grozny, without knowing that the war would soon consume her childhood. The war in Chechnya also forms the backdrop to Short Summer by Nastia Korkia, which revolves around another little girl, an 8-year-old this time, who spends the summer with her grandparents in the Russian countryside while the war destroys people’s lives. Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes by Gabriel Azorín is a film which plays with time and space. It’s set in a Roman thermal bath where we meet ancient and modern characters and has “a radical cinematographic language, potentially the most radical in the competition”, according to Furrer. Another title playing with time and bringing Kenya to the Giornate degli Autori event for the very first time is Memory of Princess Mumbi by Damien Hauser, a sci-fi fairy tale set in 2093 where a young director travels to a remote village to document the effects of a devastating war which has resulted in a ban on artificial intelligence.

Italy is represented in competition by Nicolangelo Gelormini’s La gioia, starring Valeria Golino and Saul Nanni, and exploring the forbidden bond which develops between a high school teacher and a male student; Greece will offer up Bearcave by Stergios Dinopoulos and Krysianna B. Papadakis, which homes in on the love between two girls born and raised in a village dominated by patriarchal traditions; and another staggering love story comes in the form of A Sad and Beautiful World by Cyril Aris, whose two protagonists must decide whether to start a family and seek out happiness in the Lebanon, despite the tragedies devastating the country. Rounding off the competition are two Iranian titles - Past Future Continuous by Morteza Ahmadvand and Firouzeh Khosrovani, and Inside Amir by Amir Azizi – as well as a Mexican movie called Vainilla by Mayra Hermosillo.

The 5 films screening in special events (all of which are documentaries) include Laguna by Sharunas Bartas, “a heartbreaking film” which starts with the loss of the director’s eldest daughter to offer up a meditation on life, nature and faith; Écrire la vie - Annie Ernaux racontée par des lycéennes et des lycéens by Claire Simon, making her first ever trip to the Giornate degli Autori with this original portrait of the writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature and the impact her books have on French students;and Il quieto vivere, which sees Gianluca Matarrese returning to the Gionate with a story about a family feud in a backwater Calabrian town, which is part-documentary, part-fiction and part-stage play of epic and grotesque proportions. Last but not least, there’ll be Do You Love Me by Lana Daher, which is a love letter to Beirut based on archive material, and Qui vit encore by Nicolas Wadimoff, which lends a voice to nine Palestinian refugees who managed to flee Gaza and survive the current genocide.

The Venice Nights line-up, for its part, will be opened by Massimiliano Battistella’s Dom, telling the story of orphan children from Sarajevo who were welcomed to Italy in July 1992 to help them escape the war in their homeland. Also stealing focus in that section are Toni, mio padre by Anna Negri, Confiteor. Come scoprii che non avrei fatto la rivoluzione by Bonifacio Angius, Amata by Elisa Amoruso and Film di Stato by Roland Sejko.

The Giornate degli Autori event will close in a light-hearted frame of mind with the new film by Gianni Di Gregorio (who won the Future Lion for Mid-August Lunch [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película] in 2008), which is screening out of competition and which goes by the name of Come ti muovi, sbagli. The movie tells the story of an elderly retired teacher, played by the director himself, whose monotonous life is turned upside down when his daughter (Greta Scarano) arrives on the scene in the midst of a marital crisis.

The selection is as follows:

Competition

Memory - Vladlena Sandu (France/Netherlands) (opening film)
Past Future Continuous - Morteza Ahmadvand, Firouzeh Khosrovani (Iran/Norway/Italy)
A Sad and Beautiful World - Cyril Aris (Lebanon/USA/Germany/Saudi Arabia/Qatar)
Inside Amir - Amir Azizi (Iran)
Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes - Gabriel Azorín (Spain/Portugal)
Bearcave - Stergios Dinopoulos, Krysianna B. Papadakis (Greece)
La gioia - Nicolangelo Gelormini (Italy)
Memory of Princess Mumbi - Damien Hauser (Kenya/Switzerland)
Vainilla - Mayra Hermosillo (Mexico)
Short Summer - Nastia Korkia (Germany/France/Serbia)

Out of Competition

Come ti muovi, sbagli - Gianni Di Gregorio (Italy) (closing film)

Special Events

Laguna - Sharunas Bartas (Lithuania/France)
Do You Love Me - Lana Daher (France/Lebanon/Germany/Qatar)
Il quieto vivere - Gianluca Matarrese (Italy/Switzerland)
Écrire la vie – Annie Ernaux racontée par des lycéennes et de lycéens - Claire Simon (France)
Qui vit encore - Nicolas Wadimoff (Switzerland)

Miu Miu Women’s Tales

#29 Autobiografia di una borsetta - Joanna Hogg (Italy)
#30 Fragments For Venus - Alice Diop (USA/France)

Venice Nights

Amata - Elisa Amoruso (Italy)
Confiteor. Come scoprii che non avrei fatto la rivoluzione - Bonifacio Angius (Italy)
Dom - Massimiliano Battistella (Italy/Bosnia-Herzegovina)
Indietro così! - Antonio Morabito (Italy)
Toni, mio padre - Anna Negri (Italy)
Una cosa vicina - Loris G. Nese (Italy)
Film di Stato - Roland Sejko (Italy)
6:06 - Tekla Taidelli (Italy/Portugal)
Life Beyond the Pine Curtain – L’America degli invisibili - Giovanni Troilo (Italy)