L'immagine e la parola

16-17 | 3 | 2024

Noi e gli altri

To inaugurate the Spring Academy 2024, Locarno's Cinema Rialto hosts the 11th edition of L'immagine e la parola, the spring event of the Locarno Film Festival, on March 16 and 17, this year titled Noi e gli altri.

Award-winning French filmmaker Alice Diop, recent winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, is the guest of honor at an event that will celebrates her work through screenings of some of her greatest films — Vers la tendresse (2016), Nous (2021) and Saint Omer (2022) — and conversations devoted to her filmmaking practice.

The program is also complimented by a screening and workshop aimed at young viewers and their families.

The program of L’Immagine e la parola is curated by Giona A. Nazzaro and Daniela Persico and organized in collaboration with CISA and RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera, with the support of the Ticino Film Commission.

Download the full program here

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Saturday, March 16

14:00 | Cinema Rialto, Room 3

Masterclass with Kevin B. Lee (Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at Università della Svizzera italiana), Social Confrontations and the Cinema of Alice Diop
Screening of two video essays

This hard surface, Johannes Binotto, 3’
As I was approaching tenderness, Silvia Cipelletti, 3’

Screening
Vers la tendresse, Alice Diop, France, 2016, 40', o.v. French, sub. English

17:00 | Cinema Rialto, Room 2

Spring Academy Short Films Screening

Como respirar fora d'água, Victoria Negreiros and Júlia Fávero, Brazil, 2021, 16', o.v. Portuguese, sub. English
Letizia, Francesco Manzato, Italy, 2022, 18', o.v. Italian, sub. English
A Dog, A Stone, Asma Laajimi, Tunisia/Belgium, 2023, 13', o.v. Arab, sub. English
after a room, Naomi Pacifique, Great Britain/Netherlands/Switzerland, 2021, 21', o.v. English/French/Spanish, sub. English
Lay Me by the Shore, David Findlay, Canada, 2022, 18', o.v. English
La morte dei bombi, Sara Fiechter, Switzerland, 2023, 18', o.v. Italian, sub. English

20:30 | Cinema Rialto, Room 1

Video essays

All About Love, Libertad Gills, 2'
Respirer ensemble, Evelyn Kreutzer, 3'
Videographic experiments by students of USI Accademia di architettura Mendrisio, 4'

Screening
Saint Omer, Alice Diop, France, 2022, 122', o.v. French, sub. Italian
Introduced by the director

Sunday, March 17

10:30 | Cinema Rialto, Room 3

Masterclass with Alice Diop
In French with Italian translation

15:30 | Cinema Rialto, Room 2

Video essays

Tracing a Train of Thought, Kevin B. Lee, 6'
Still Life, Marine de Dardel, 2'

Screening
Nous by Alice Diop, France, 2021, 114', o.v. French, sub. Italian

Masterclass

The program offers the chance to participate in two exclusive masterclasses: the first, given by Prof. Kevin B. Lee, will deal with the social issues present in Alice Diop’s cinema (Saturday, March 16, 2-4pm, Cinema Rialto, Room 3). The second, held by Alice Diop, will focus on working with the protagonists in her films (Sunday, March 17, 10:30am-12:30pm, Cinema Rialto, Room 3).

Registration is required for the masterclasses by writing to workshop@locarnofestival.ch. Places are limited.

Children and youth program

Sunday, March 17

10:00 | Cinema Rialto, Room 2

Screening
Titina, Kajsa Næss, Norway/Belgium, 2022, 91', Italian version
Preceded by a short film made by the Locarno 2 Middle School

14:00 - 16:30 | Playroom and ggl Library at Scuole elementari Saleggi, via delle Scuole 10 (2nd Floor), Locarno

Children's theater workshop organized by the gruppo genitori locarnese and animated by the Métis'Arte Association (target age 8-11, snack provided).

LIMITED SEATS: registration at dietrolequinte@ggl.ch by March 10.

Cost CHF 30.-
Cost ggl members CHF 20.-

Nous

The RER B is an urban train that traverses Paris and its environs from north to south.
Multiaward-winning documentary filmmaker Alice Diop takes us through these suburban spaces and confronts us with some of the faces and stories of which they are composed.
A moving testament to the importance of filming as a process of bearing witness and remembering, Nous is timely in many ways. It is subtle and shrewd in a world which favours shortcuts and easy answers. Justifiably adopting the fragmented structure of a patchwork portrait in order to describe a riven society, Diop displays impressive control of her essay and its impact. In the film’s first few minutes, a deer is observed, through binoculars. A certain sense of awkward, man-made distance stays with us. Isolation, discrimination and nostalgia for hierarchies, inherited from a monarchical past… Divisions haunt France’s present. But the human urge to give as well as to receive stubbornly creeps into every situation, observed or triggered. Could this be the one thing that still keeps a nation together?

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Titina

Italian airship engineer Umberto Nobile enjoys a quiet life with his beloved dog Titina, who charmed him into rescuing her from the streets of Rome. One day, Norwegian explorer superstar Roald Amundsen contacts him and orders an airship to conquer the North Pole. Nobile seizes the opportunity to go down in history. He brings Titina along, and the unlikely trio sets out on an expedition to the last undiscovered place on Earth. Their quest is successful but, in the aftermath, the two men start to quarrel over the glory... Through the eyes of the four-legged celebrity Titina, (re)discover a true story of triumph and defeat.

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Saint Omer

Saint Omer court of law. Young novelist Rama attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. But as the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama’s convictions and call into question our own judgement.

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The guest

Alice Diop

is a French director who has always worked to find the link between fiction and documentary, exploring areas often characterised by profound change, such as the Parisian suburbs, and latent conflicts in contemporary society, where gender and ethnicity are still at the root of major social inequalities. Her film Vers la tendresse won in the Best Short Film category at the 2017 Césars. Her documentary film We won Best Film in the Encounters section and the Best Documentary Award at the Berlinale 2021. Her first feature film Saint Omer won the Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize and the Lion of the Future - Luigi De Laurentiis Award at the Venice Film Festival 2022. The film has also been selected to represent France at the 2023 Oscars in the Best International Film category.

Spring Academy