Tommaso Donati
Locarno Residency 2022 | Switzerland
Locarno Residency 2022 | Switzerland
Tommaso Donati (Lugano, 1988) graduated in film studies at the École Internationale de Création Audiovisuelle et de Réalisation (EICAR) in Paris. He currently lives and works in Ticino. His work combines a narrative approach with documentary cinema and is structured around the theme of marginality. His short films and documentaries have been presented at various national and international festivals, including Locarno, Solothurn, Turin, Festival dei Popoli, FilmmakerFest and Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin.
2015 Faim
2016 Dormiente
2017 A Song from the Future
2017 Esseri
2018 Monte Amiata
2019 Je parle à mes démons
2020 Cligne-Musette
2021 L'epoca Geniale
2022 Forma del primo movimento
2023 Poetenleben
Production: Ventura Film SA
An industrial city near the border is in crisis: an era is ending and a new one is opening. Two inmates, Michele and Dejan, are rehearsing a text for a play that deals with the topics of war, solitude, and memory. At another time, the characters that make up this imaginary city begin to be revealed. Miriam, a train conductor, meets and helps a young boy named Faisal who unsuccessfully tries to cross the border every day. Unhappy with his job at the post office, Masino gets fired and starts following his dream of playing music, reconnecting with Miriam, his former love. Michaela, Masino’s young violin pupil, is struggling with expressing her talent because of a vision problem she has been developing. Oscillating between dream and reality, these characters are waiting for something to change, trapped in their own mental prisons and boundaries – before they realize they need to make a move. The film creates a new city and geography, a place of hope and miracles, where time moves differently.
Tales of imprisonment, of distant wars, of beloved faces that can no longer be outlined in the mind, of melodies that fail to take form; stories of young and old abandoned under arcades, waiting on station platforms, inside a bar, or queuing in an office. All this in a set of non-places between city and province that reflect the protagonists' state of limbo, waiting for a revelation.
