Matteo Calore

A suburban high school, structures, students and teaching staff are the exemplary mirror of a social and economic depression that seems irreversible. To worsen the situation, a few meters from the school, between the houses of the neighborhood, the "Zoo", a center of assistance to migrants became over the years a permanent refugee camp. A professor is called to hold a remedial course for six students suspended for disciplinary reasons. But when the clashes between the population and migrants break out, the situation quickly gets out of hand.

When the past re-emerges, it can prove to be uncontrollable and become another present, the here and now of a space that is contemporaneously clear-cut and indefinite, suspended within a frame of mind that can take your breath away. The movie is a journey inside this dimension, as it recounts what it means to cross this threshold and teeter between unexpected tears and sudden laughter. A reflection on old age and what you can discover by looking at yourself in this mirror, the film is the outcome of a long process of listening and dozens of lengthy encounters in five regions in Italy, in search of yesterday’s world, that sometimes seems very far away and sometimes strangely present.

Pietro and Alvise come from a long line of fishing families from Giudecca, Venice's most 'working-class' island. But they don't see eye to eye on the seemingly unstoppable transformation of the lives of the Venetians and the city's very identity. Indeed, the far-reaching impact of global tourism has changed the relationship between Venice and its residents, and the pandemic has only thrown this critical situation into relief. Pietro would just like to keep fishing the typical crabs found in the Lagoon, lonely as that lifestyle is, while Alvise believes their home on the Giudecca itself is the ticket to joining the elite managing the city's real estate assets, hence running Venice. This clash of views will involve the entire family, in an ensemble film about how our world is changing.

"La Biennale di Venezia: il cinema al tempo del Covid" is a video diary, produced by the Venice Biennale in collaboration with Rai Cinema and the Istituto Luce Cinecittà, of what went on "backstage" at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, held under the restrictions imposed by the safety protocols required by the covid-19 pandemic.

Stuck in his hometown, Venice, during the pandemic, director Andrea Segre turns the camera on the frozen city, while reminiscing about his father, a scientist and chemist, and the past.

A personal take on the Italian economic growth of the 60s and contemporary economic growth of Kazakhstan.

In October 2012, after 123 years, the cotton factory Honegger of Albino closed down, in the middle valley of Bergamo, where working is a religion. In the cotton factory, the place at the loom was handed down from mother to daughter, and newly employed workers were sure to have found "ol pà 'n véta", their bread and butter for a life time. Following for a whole winter the daily life of three workers on unemployment benefits, the film narrates the decline, now definitive, of a whole idea of work and society and the subsequent emptiness. Such a transition concerns the whole of Italy, where a fourth of the industrial power was lost in the last five years. However, Italy is not clearly dealing with such a transition yet. Now that bread is finished, how are we going to reinvent our life?