VERMIGLIO, doubly praised with the Amilcar Prize of the Jury of Critics

The film VERMIGLIO unanimously received the Amilcar Prize of the Jury of Film Critics at the end of the first Villerupt version of « The Mask and the Feather » which took place at the Arche, New Cultural Center of the City of Villerupt after a little less than an hour and a half of deliberations, before a final public vote for the spectators present on Sunday, November 3 from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. who had the privilege of listening to the analyses of informed film buffs and the feelings of the five members of the Jury of Critics of this 47th Edition of the Italian Film Festival of Villerupt.

During this very first public session introduced and presented by Anthony Humbertclaude, Director of SG Organisation, a dynamic Nancy communications agency in charge of Press/Media Relations, faithfully promoting the Villerupt Italian Film Festival for many years.

This very « first » initiative and event therefore allowed the audience present, having previously attended the screening of the film Les Damnés, nominated in the selection, to become fully acquainted physically and visually with the 2024 Critics’ Jury, chaired this year by:

– Perrine Quennesson, Journalist for the magazines Cinemateaser, Le Film Français and Trois Couleurs as well as for the programs Le Cercle Séries on Canal+ and Clap on Europe, creator and host of the podcast 7e Science, surrounded by:
– LUDOVIC BEOT Film critic at Les Inrockuptibles, screenwriter and director. – Séverine DANFLOUS Writer and film critic for Transfuge, film teacher.
– Frédéric MERCIER Film critic, member of the editorial staff of Positif, Transfuge and columnist at Cercle on Canal+.
– Jean-Pierre THILGES Critic, columnist and blogger for The Hatari Papers and Le Mur des Étoiles Luxembourg and founding member of the Luxembourg Association of the Film Press.

The six films selected in competition to receive the Amilcar Critics’ Prize, the subject of lively, passionate and controversial debates during this public « premiere » were:

– VERMIGLIO
Vermiglio is a small mountain village in Trentino, below the Tonale Pass, the scene of fierce battles during the First World War. Another war is coming to an end in this very harsh winter of 1944-1945, which makes life even more difficult. Cesare Graziadei (Tommaso Ragno) is a schoolteacher and absolute master of his family of seven children, including three girls, at the center of his attention. When one of his nephews arrives in the village in the company of another deserter, Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), a Sicilian, he chooses to hide them in a shack he owns higher up in the forest. In the village, no one would think of denouncing them, but there is a certain anxiety. Pietro arouses the curiosity of the three sisters, especially the eldest, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), who never misses an opportunity to visit him and who finds herself pregnant. No matter, they are married. It is spring and the war is over. Lucia’s belly is rounding, so there is no question of following Pietro who must go to Sicily to see his family. It is summer, he leaves. Lucia gives birth to a little girl, but she has no news of him. Time passes, not a letter in response to the many she has sent to the priest of Pietro’s village. The summer passes and news finally arrives, astonishing. Lucia goes to Sicily.

« A story of children and adults, of deaths and births, of disappointments and rebounds, of their solidarity in the face of the twists and turns of life and who, forming a community, become individuals. The smell of wood and warm milk on icy mornings. With the distant and ever-present war, experienced by those who remained outside the great machinery: mothers who watched the world from their kitchens, with babies dying because of blankets that were too short, women who feared being widowed, peasants who waited for sons who never returned, teachers and priests who replaced fathers. A story of war without bombs or great battles. In the iron logic of the mountain that reminds man every day how small he is.

Vermiglio is a landscape of the soul, a family lexicon that lives in me, on the threshold of my subconscious, an act of love for my father, his family and their small village. Through a personal temporality, it intends to pay homage to a collective memory.  » – Maura Delpero, MIAC 2024.

– LE DELUGE – GLI ULTIMI GIORNI DI MARIA ANTONIETTA

1792, the Ancien Régime is coming to an end. Louis XVI, his wife Marie-Antoinette and their children have been arrested and imprisoned in the Temple Tower, a gloomy Parisian fortress, awaiting trial. Far from the splendor of Versailles, they are isolated and vulnerable for the first time in their lives. Loosely inspired by the notebooks of Cléry, the King’s valet who remained with him until his death. « It is a literally apocalyptic film: it approaches the moment when all the veils and masks fall. With a more metaphysical than historical ambition, it explores a personal apocalypse, that of the protagonists »? explains Giani Luca Jodice.

« As soon as we mention Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette, we immediately think of lace, tall wigs, flashy dresses, colors, Versailles or… the guillotine. Between these two extremes, there is a middle ground, a time that no one has ever told: the few months when the last king and queen of France, with their two small children, were imprisoned in a sinister castle at the gates of Paris, awaiting their execution. A short, condensed time, where in violence and harassment, all the masks fell: that of the king and queen as public and private figures, that of the old regime, that of History that has turned the page once and for all, and that of God who has now disappeared into the shadows, leaving man completely alone. The Flood is an apocalyptic film in the most literal sense of the term: that of unveiling. It tells the story of the end of that absolutism and monarchy that seemed never to come, laying bare two of the most universal icons of History, for the first time before the people, himself, and humanity, says Gianluca Jodice, on filmitalia.org .

– SICILIAN LETTERS – IDDU
Early 2000s. Catello returns to Sicily after spending six years in detention. All his assets are sequestered and he is ruined. They even have to demolish a hotel that he was having built in a protected area, his last hope of bouncing back. Catello is the godfather of Matteo Messina Denaro who is wanted and hiding somewhere. Catello is approached by the police: if he gives Matteo he will be able to resume the construction of his hotel. A game of manipulation is set in motion. But who is really pulling the strings?

– LES DAMNES – I DANNATI -THE DAMNED
1862, during the Civil War. The Northern Army sends a company of volunteers to the West with the mission of identifying and mapping lands that have not yet been explored. From camp to camp, to the rhythm of daily tasks, the soldiers venture into a beautiful and wild nature, preparing at any moment for the assault of an invisible enemy…

– PRIMA LA VITA -IL TEMPO CHE CIVUOLE
A father, his daughter and Pinocchio. It is the end of the 1960s and Luigi Comencini is preparing his Pinocchio. Francesca accompanies him on the set and discovers the magic of cinema. An enchanted moment that only lasts for a while. Francesca grows up in Italy in the 1970s, when young people sometimes put themselves in danger. Francesca takes drugs and her father, to protect her, takes her to Paris where they stay for a while. For both of them, it is a great moment of dialogue, of reflection on cinema and life.

– QUELL’ ESTATE WITH IRENE
August 1997. Clara (Camilla Brandenburg) and Irene (Noée Abita) are both seventeen years old, they are hospitalized in an oncology hospital and see the end of their ordeals. An outing is organized for patients in remission and it is there that they meet. They quickly become inseparable although very different, or perhaps precisely because of that. Irene, the brunette, is bold and dynamic, Clara, the blonde, is diaphanous and shy. She remains seated at the edge of the pool as a spectator when Irene swims. But the pool is too small for Irene who dreams of the open sea. She convinces Clara to follow her in her escape to an island and their life takes an unimaginable turn at the time of their illness, not so long ago.

« Quell’estate con Irene was born from the desire to tell that moment when the first impressions of life mark us, create our identity and our memory, that summer that we will never forget. I wanted to make a film that had the indefinite substance of a daydream and the surgical precision of the most important memories.
The first time I imagined it, I was listening to To Wish Impossible Things by the Cure: “Remember how it used to be / when the sun would fill up the sky / Remember how we used to feel / those days would never end” -Carlo Sironi, press kit.

VERMIGLIO was doubly awarded and applauded during the Closing Ceremony and the Amilcars award ceremony of this 47th edition of the Italian Film of Villerupt on November 8 at the Arche by receiving the Amilcar Prize from the Critics’ Jury unanimously but also the Amilcar Professional from the Cinema Operators.

© IMPACT EUROPEAN

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