At full sail

A collateral award at the Venice Film Festival, the Premio Inclusione e Sostenibilità Edipo Re was born here in Venice – to be pricese, aboard sailing yacht Edipo Re. The yacht has quite a history: Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas, among others, have been her guests, and since 2017, she has been one of the most lively and innovative spaces at the VFF for her social, alternative, and green vibe that cinema enthusiasts love. An ‘island’ of fine gastronomy, too, as locally-sourced as feasible. To partner with Isola Edipo is, for us at Venews Daily, a no-brainer. We will follow, day by day, a non-stop programme of events the most diverse. The name of this year’s programme is Radici (‘roots’) and it includes screenings, awards, monographs, presentations, live shows, meetins, live music, and more.

Inclusivity and sustainability can mean many things. How does the Edipo Re Award characterize the meaning of these two concepts?
Over the years, we have been trying to give some substance and concreteness to these terms, which are today abused in what is frankly irritating hot air. Let’s start with ‘inclusivity’: the way we mean it, it is more about mutuality than it is one-directional. We are applying the same principle to sustainability, we want a larger vision for sustainability, one that encompasses the whole reality, nature, and the way we should relate to people, places, and ourselves.
Also, I have always wanted to include this perspective with a programme that would extend beyond a dictionary-specific definition. I often picked films that didn’t directly, objectively relate to the theme of the programme for our juries; I wanted the films to establish some tension towards the same themes in terms of their nature and language. This meant that, over the years, the Award has been given to films quite unlike one another: Still Recording by Ghiath Ayoub and Saeed Al Batal, Saint Omer by Alice Diop, The Man Who Sold His Skin by Kaouther Ben Hania, Corpus Christi by Jan Komasa, all the way to a pair of pictures that do not apparently have  a lot in common, but they do share much deep within: Al Garib by Ameer Fakher Eldin and Vera Dreams of the Sea by Kaltrina Krasniqi.

Year after year, the Edipo Re Award involved a diverse bunch of professionals. Who will be juror in 2023, and how did you pick your panel?
Our intention was to blend different perspectives from people in the field of art and culture, mixing their knowledge. Other times, we picked people of similar professional backgrounds, though ones that took them in entirely different directions.
This year, the jurors are Alberto Malanchino, Caterina Guzzanti, and Carlotta Vagnoli. Malanchino is an actor that can fill a theatre with shows of social and political nature as well as entertain audiences as one of the most popular TV doctors in Italy. I wanted our jury to have the eyes of a young man who can keep together two planes as distant as those are, and who can address radically different audiences. Caterina Guzzanti had a very long career in TV, cinema, and theatre; her comedy is rare today in her ability to overturn the world based on a piercing perception of reality. I think a woman with such a life surely knows how to look beyond the apparent. Carlotta Vagnoli is an author who will never let go of her analytical abilities; she was able to create room for conversation and dedicate it to women, their bodies, their identities. Besides books, she uses social media to prove how some communication avenues can effectively push reality forward. Of her perspective, I want her sense for adventure and her non-conformity.

Three professional jurors, plus a junior panel made of students at the local university. An important addition. Why this choice?
We established our Award to contribute to the distribution of auteur cinema in Italy. There’s no denying it is a very difficult endeavour. While our official award supports theatrical distribution all over the country, the junior prize awarded by students will support distribution in university theatre in different cities in Italy.

The nominees come from all sections of the Venice Film Festival: Main Competition, Orizzonti, International Film Critics’ Week, Venice Days. Let’s have a look at the list.
We nominated three films in each section to get an all-around sense of the different expressive languages, stories, and themes. From the Main Competition, we shortlisted Evil Does not Exist by Ruysuke Hamaguchi, Me Captain by Matteo Garrone, and Origin by Ava DuVernay. From the Orizzonti section, we picked Paradiset Brinner by Mika Gustafson, The Red Suitcase by Fidel Devkota, Yurt (Dormitory) by Nehir Tuna. From the International Film Critics’ Week list, we picked Life Is not a Competition but I’m Winning by Julia Fuhr Mann, Malqueridas by Tana Gilbert, About Last Year by Dunja Lavecchia, Beatrice Surano, Morena Terranova. From the Venice Days programme, we chose Oceans Are the Real Continents by Tommaso Santambrogio, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person by Ariane Louis-Seize, and Melk by Stefanie Kolk.

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