The thin thread

Gaia Furrer, the Venice Days between resilience and resistance
by Marisa Santin
  • thursday, 5 september 2024

For many years now, Giornate degli Autori has offered the Lido a program of exceptional quality, complementing the Festival’s main lineup and enriching it with diverse voices from around the globe. Gaia Furrer, Artistic Director of the Venice Days, tells us about the 2024 edition.

How did you curate your selection this year, and what themes and geographies have emerged?

This year’s selection truly spans a wide range of ‘geographies.’ We explore underrepresented regions like Sudan, a country plagued by ongoing conflict, as depicted in the documentary Soudan, Souviens-Toi by French-Algerian journalist Hind Meddeb. We journey to Mongolia with To Kill a Mongolian Horse by writer-director Xiaoxuan Jiang, and to the Swiss Alps with the thriller Alpha by Jan-Willem van Ewijk. We also visit the Amazon with Marianna Brennand’s Manas Amazon, as well as Italy, Holland, and France. These diverse settings reveal a common thread, not preselected but naturally emerging from the films themselves: at the heart of these stories are characters who appear fragile on the surface but ultimately prove to be resilient guardians of an inner strength. They are often a bit eccentric, living on the fringes, yet they possess incredible courage. These films portray tragic events with a lightness that conveys a persistent will to resist and move forward. As one character in the short film Kora by Cláudia Varejão says, “To start over, you have to move forward.” This sentiment is beautifully captured in this year’s poster: a woman walking on a tightrope at a dizzying height, accompanied by the flight of herons, a symbol of perseverance in a world that both implodes and explodes around her, yet does not deter her from her path.

Women’s Cinema: Alice Rohrwacher’s Lifetime Achievement Award and Federica Di Giacomo’s SIAE Award for Creative Talent, following the opening of the Days with Coppia aperta quasi spalancata. It’s a great moment for women’s cinema, both in Italy and beyond.
This year, 18 out of the 25 films in our program are directed by women, marking a very positive year for female representation. Federica Di Giacomo’s documentary features three key women: Federica Di Giacomo as the director, Chiara Francini as the actress, protagonist, and producer, and Franca Rame, the author of the text on which the film is based, whom we honored during the opening. Additionally, we continue our Miu Miu Women’s Tales project, which we’ve been running for 12 years in partnership with Miu Miu, celebrating female creativity. We also have five films in competition directed by women and six out of nine films in the Venetian Nights section are by female directors. Almost all our special out-of-competition events are also helmed by women. While we’re still not at full parity, we’re seeing a significant increase in submissions from women, and we’re thrilled about this progress.

Sala Laguna © Giornate degli Autori

Many operational and content partners are helping to expand the reach of the Giornate. What kind of ground do you cultivate through these synergies, even physically, by occupying increasingly strategic spaces at the Festival?
Our primary collaboration is with Isola Edipo and its director, Silvia Jop. Together, we’ve revitalized the Sala Laguna, a cinema on the Lido that had been closed for forty years. In 2020, despite the challenges of Covid, we joyfully reopened this space, providing the Lido community with a cinema that’s accessible to all—free of charge and without the need for accreditation. We dedicated Sala Laguna to the memory of Valentina Pedicini, a talented director and documentarian who presented her first fiction work at the Giornate. The Sala Laguna now hosts the Venetian Nights program, a non-competitive section that features an Italian film each evening. The programming is very eclectic, with experimental films shown alongside more commercially robust productions, archival documentaries, observational documentaries, comedies, and deeply serious films. This variety reflects our commitment to exploring diverse narratives and expanding the cinematic experience at the Festival.

Giornate is increasingly embracing animation, and the film by the Quay brothers is a true gem for connoisseurs. How did you connect with them?
Stephen and Timothy Quay have only made three feature films, yet they are regarded as masters in the history of cinema. It wasn’t obvious that they would agree to participate, but with great humility and a willingness to engage, they have given us this dreamlike and truly surprising film, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. This film is based on a story by the Polish author, Bruno Schulz, and it was shot nearly twenty years after their previous work. The Quay brothers have had a significant influence on a master like Terry Gilliam, and even Christopher Nolan dedicated a documentary to them. What can I say? It’s a beautiful gift for the Festival audience.

Iza Kiszka Hoflik, The Quay Brothers, Lucie Conrad © Giornate degli Autori

Are there any updates on the film Antikvari, which was stalled due to a script copyright issue? Will we get to see it?
Antikvari, the second film by Georgian director Rusudan Glurjidze, was the first film we invited. It tells a love story set in 2006, the year when the Russians illegally expelled thousands of Georgians from Russia. It’s a film with a significant political background, and we loved how it highlights personal and emotional stories within the context of a people’s tragedy. Together with the Biennale, we had to deal with a ruling from the Venice Tribunal regarding a rights issue related to the film’s screenplay. We had to suspend the first two screenings to protect the film and the director as much as possible. Fortunately, our lawyers acted in record time to obtain a new ruling from the Tribunal to safeguard the artist’s freedom of expression, and now we are able to hold the third screening, scheduled for September 6th at 11 AM in Sala Perla, with the author present.

Could you share your thoughts on this year’s Giornate degli Autori Jury?
This year, we have an exceptionally diverse jury composed of ten young European cinema professionals, including distributors, programmers, selectors, and critics. They are led by British director Joanna Hogg, known for her collaborations with Tilda Swinton and films produced by Martin Scorsese. It is a great honor for us to have her as the jury president.

Featured image: Gaia Furrer, Giornate degli Autori 2024, ph. Giulia Barini
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