The 56th Trentofilmfestival, directed by Maurizio Nichetti, is ready

Starting on 22 April next, the 56th TrentoFilmfestival, under the artistic direction of Maurizio Nichetti, will offer a rich collection of films, fictions and documentaries until 4 May. The 2008 programme promises to be full of auteur narrative and documentary films that, in the competition section and in the special sections, will present exciting accounts of men in relation to nature, mountains and adventure.

There will be many Italian and European first screenings in competition and out of competition: among these, in particular, the first film of the couple Stefano Accorsi and Laetitia Casta, “La jeune fille et les loups”, directed by Gilles Legrand. Set in the First World War, it narrates the meeting between Angela, a young veterinarian with a passion for wolves (L. Casta) and Giuseppe (S. Accorsi), a good wild man who lives in the mountains. The film was shot in the French and Italian Alps. Another Italian first screening is “The Beckoning Silence”, by the director Louise Osmond, which narrates the feared north face of the Eiger and the gripping and dramatic ascent by Toni Kurz and his team in 1936. The film is presented by the mountaineer Joe Simpson, the author of the book on which the film is based and the protagonist in 2003 of the film success “Touching The Void”.

In competition and also screened for the first time in Italy is “Blindsight” by Lucy Walker, which has received excellent ratings in the cinemas of Germany and America. The film narrates the expedition of a group of six blind Nepalese boys led by the mountaineer, Erich Weinhmayer, who is also blind. Challenging the difficulties of the climb and despite their disability, the group manages to achieve arduous ascents in the mountains. Also an Italian first is “The Call of the Wild”, by Ron Lamothe, the other side of the story told in the film by Sean Penn “Into the wild”: this version contains a number of previously unknown facts about Chris McCandless and his journey across the United States, recounted in the book by Jon Krakauer. A European first screening is “Steep” by Mark Obenhaus, also presented at Tribeca FF in New York, the story of 35 years of extreme skiing in interviews with the main characters, among whom Stefano de Benedetti. An Italian first is “Stranded, The Andes plane crash” by Arijon Ponzalo, already presented at Sundance and the IDF in Amsterdam, a convincing and breathtaking film, which reconstructs, through fiction and direct accounts, the dramatic story of the plane crash in the Andes that involved a team of Uruguayan players. For the first time the survivors narrate how they managed to stay alive by eating the bodies of their dead companions while waiting to be rescued. Instead, “Au delà des Cimes”, by the film director Remy Tezier, pays homage to one of the greatest mountaineers of our time, Catherine Destivelle.

Among the documentaries on nature in the 2008 Festival, “The Edge of Eden: Living with Grizzlies” (first European screening) is the story of the Canadian naturalist Charlie Russel, the surrogate mother of two frisky orphaned bear cubs, and the document of his co-existence with big brown bears in the Kamchatka peninsula in Siberia.

Of great interest are the films on Tibet and China. The voice of Harrison Ford in “Dalai Lama Renaissance” by Khashyar Darvich poetically portrays the spiritual leader of the Tibetan population… a culture we find again in a female version by Bari Pearlman in “Daughters of Wisdom”. In this documentary the camera enters, for the first time, the female Tibetan monastery of Nangchen and narrates the daily life. “Feet Unbound” by Khee Jin is the story of the Great March (1934 - 1937) seen from the women’s point of view, while “Up the Yangtze” by the film director Yung Chang is a journey along the great Chinese river that photographs the transformations in China today. It is like the documentary “La muraglia cinese” that a young Carlo Lizzani brought to the Trento Festival fifty years ago, which we can see again during the meeting with the film director.

A Festival of 85 films, of which 34 in competition, that will begin with the screening of Paul Czinner’s masterpiece “Miss Else” (1928) with live music by Marlene Kuntz and the participation of Gianni Maroccolo and Ivana Gatti.

On the final day the latest film by the director Werner Herzog, “Encounters At The End of the World”, will be screened in homage to the wilderness of the Antarctica, its solitude and to those who have dedicated themselves to scientific research in extreme conditions. On the prize-giving evening Mario Monicelli’s film, “La Grande Guerra”, will be shown, in the presence of the film director, to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

marco.benedetti@trentofestiva