Daniel Kémeny
Locarno Residency 2022 | Switzerland
Locarno Residency 2022 | Switzerland
Daniel Kemény (b. 1981) moves through the art scene, starting from different points of view and languages. He studied Art and Sculpture at the KHB in Berlin, then worked for over ten years on installations, drawings and sculptures. Since 2010 he has started to deal with radio and cinema as his main form of expression. His first feature film sòne was selected in the international Burning Lights competition of the Visions du Réel festival in Nyon in 2020 and received the special mention at the Solothurn Film Festival in 2021. Supertempo, his second feature film, was presented in the national competition at Visions du Réel in 2022.
2020 Sòne
2021 Una sauna sul tetto
2022 SuPertemPo
The rich and perfect Switzerland is actually not so perfect. From a small village in southern Italy, a young man moves to Ticino and begins friendships with his Lugano peers: children of professionals and alcoholics, in the midst of 520 banks and villas with swimming pools. This generational tale shows the madness of the 1990s between the discovery of electronic music, drug use, endless fields of marijuana and the drama of the immense distance between these young people and the society in which they live. Without beliefs or political positions, resigned to unbridled capitalism, some die of drug abuse, commit suicide or get killed. The protagonist decides to leave the rich province, in a movement of new emigration.
I feel the need to recount the world of my youth in the extraordinary Ticino context, which strongly reflects the global dynamics of the late 1990s. Atomica is a generational film that faces an era lacking collective recollection.
