38° Torino Film Festival

A life marked by wandering. A character that leaves no traces or maps to trace. The file does not give an account of him. His works had no scripts and only existed in the fugacity of the moment. Jorge Bonino was an unclassifiable artist. He triumphed in all of Europe without a translator, he only used an invented language that everyone understood. An imaginary friend mapped the traces his body left in space through stories about a possible life.

Talcum, Eastern Kentucky, a remote rural area of the Appalachians where people feel un-American. Brian Ritchie and his family have lived in this area for decades, once a land of thriving mines. Year after year, they have seen an explosive mix of economic decline, ecological disaster, and social violence develop. They call them hillbillies, an insult that has become for many a sign of identity. Among these is Brian himself, who lives trapped between a mythical past and a future without prospects. He is one of the last witnesses of a world that is disappearing and that is why he inspires his poetry.

Talcum, Eastern Kentucky, a remote rural area of the Appalachians where people feel un-American. Brian Ritchie and his family have lived in this area for decades, once a land of thriving mines. Year after year, they have seen an explosive mix of economic decline, ecological disaster, and social violence develop. They call them hillbillies, an insult that has become for many a sign of identity. Among these is Brian himself, who lives trapped between a mythical past and a future without prospects. He is one of the last witnesses of a world that is disappearing and that is why he inspires his poetry.

K. begins a journey to a Levant being colonized and then travels through time and place to anti-neocolonial struggles there set in conversation with others across the globe. She learns lessons on agroecology and self-governance, on sustainable energy, and about education outside of the framework of the nation-state. Inspired by the Syrian history prior to the creation of nation-states and following the government’s partial withdrawal from opposition areas, this compelling journey tells of experiments that act as a manual for the future generations.

A young woman works as a guard in an overcrowded prison in Madagascar. She passes the time daydreaming about her father, a murderer who abandoned her as a child after killing his own brother. In her imagination, her father becomes a mythical killer, wandering the countryside and rolling enchanted dice to decide the fate of his victims. Secretly, she yearns for the day he might turn up amongst the prisoners. When a new inmate arrives claiming to know her father, the young woman‘s fantasies begin to turn to nightmares.

Abandoning himself to his personal world of legends, daring encounters, and reflections on the reality that surrounds him, Beto shows spectators a fascinating place: the unknown. A Mexican village relates with Shakespeare; a number of local legends relate with romantic tragedies; contemporary life relates with past history. In the same manner, love remains a fundamental concept and self-care proves to be inextricably tied to the care of others. After Ocean (2014) and Wind (2016), Tamara Drakulić brings a documentary with a magical and anthropological flair to the Torino Film Festival.

Somi e suo marito Sukhram si sono conosciuti giovanissimi, mentre combattevano tra le file del gruppo maoista dei Naxaliti, che fin dagli anni 60 rivendica i diritti delle comunità tribali indiane. Qualche anno fa hanno abbandonato il movimento e si sono arresi alla polizia. Ora vivono in una colonia costruita insieme ad altri ex compagni, ma lo status sociale di combattenti arresi sta coinvolgendo i loro figli, compromettendone il futuro: nonostante Somi e Sukhram cerchino di garantire loro la migliore educazione possibile, i loro ragazzi sono esposti a costanti rischi.

In France a Haitian researcher attempts to read the past within the stratigraphic layers of Jurassic limestone. At the same time, in Haiti, a group of young actors translate and rehearse Monsieur Toussaint, a play written by Édouard Glissant in 1961. The play recounts the last days of the life of Louverture Toussaint, the Haitian revolutionary who died in 1803 in exile in a cell in the French Alps. As the play proceeds, the actors become possessed by the characters they play, and at the end the ghost of Louverture joins the group and guides them on a voyage for a new exile.