Living matter

The film programme at the International Film Critics’ Week seems to shy away from giving definite answers, rather, it stimulates our conscience and animate our outlook. What were you looking for, and what did you find, in the features you picked?
We keep all preconceived notions at bay in our work. We are open to discovery, and to surprise, while holding true to the fundamental premise of why we’re here: to keep firmly connected to the present, to the world, and to speculate about the most interesting trends in the future of cinema. This is how we keep our identity, our consistency, and how we avoid being predictable or repetitive. We picked nine films that show a degree of resolve, that are so fully integrated with our times, that so beautifully mirror our states of uncertainty, of tension, of alienation, precariousness, expectation…

The International Film Critics’ Week has always been at the frontline, and never turned down a project out of prejudice. However, as a film critic, do you believe that there are standards we can’t dismiss when we evaluate a film?
I believe solid frames of reference are needed, as is culture, to guide you like a compass can. It is also absolutely essential to be able to contextualize each work and have the open-mindedness that is needed to understand how film is a living matter and evolves constantly. Today’s cinema is born of a substrate that is completely different from what it was in the past. It makes no sense to use the same criteria we used even twenty years ago. We shouldn’t be afraid to change. It may feel like losing one’s footing all the time, but it is imperative to update the way we look at things as fast as the industry’s canons change.

Homegrown is the only documentary in your 2024 line-up. It is dedicated to what will be a crucial event in 2024, the US presidential elections, due in November. Help us understand this choice.
I don’t think this is an exception to our rules. Last year, out of a line-up of nine, four were non-fiction works. Different styles and different methods to render the state of health of documentary cinema over the last several years. We shouldn’t even have to say it: documentary is cinema, and when the offer is valid, we won’t be the ones holding it back! This is precisely the case with Homegrown, which is part of a long tradition of American civil documentary cinema thanks to its ability to frame an appalling world without judging it, always keeping the right distance, always looking straight in the eye the contradictions and fragility in modern democracies. This is an issue that touches us all, and from very up close.

SIC@SIC is your Italian short movie section. By now, we can say it is perfectly self-sufficient. What can you tell us about the future course of cinema?
What is most apparent, to me, is that these young authors have no fear of taking risks. They work freely in a territory that I sincerely hope they will keep investigating, even after the natural passage to full-feature films. It will be essential as we follow healthy renewal processes in the future.