ID: GENDER.NET
Arianna
Carlo Lavagna
Italy, 2015 | colour, DCP, 84 min, Italian Prod: Tommaso Bertani, Damiano Ticconi, Carlo Lavagna | Prod Comp: Ring Film | Sc: Carlo Salsa, Carlo Lavagna, Chiara Barzini | Cam: Hélène Louvart | Ed: Lizabeth Gelber | Prod Des: Fabrizio d’Arpino | Sound Des: Ivano Mataldi | Music: Emanuele de Raymondi | With: Ondina Quadri, Massimo Popolizio, Valentina Carnelutti, Corrado Sassi, Blu Yoshimi, Eduardo Valdarini, Lidia Vitale | Print/Sales: Rai Com | www.ringfilm.it/arianna
In this sober, unsullied coming-ofage film, the 19-year-old protagonist Arianna (Ondina Quadri) struggles with her body, sexuality and identity. In the symbolic opening scene that marks the start of her quest, gorgeous Arianna with her bright green eyes floats in a cool lake, just like Hermaphrodite in Greek mythology. Arianna was, as she immediately explains in the voice-over, born three times: once as a boy, once as a girl and a third time during the decisive summer at her family’s old country home. Despite her age, her breasts still don’t seem fully developed, she has never had her period and sex is unknown territory. When she is confronted with her younger cousin who has blossomed into a woman, Arianna sets out to answer fundamental questions about life that she has had, subconsciously or otherwise, for years.
Las lindas
The Pretty Ones Melisa Liebenthal
WORLD PREMIERE
Argentina, 2016 | colour, DCP, 77 min, Spanish Prod: Eugenia Campos Guevara | Sc: Melisa Liebenthal | Ed: Sofía Mele | Sound Des: Marcos Canosa | Music: Ángeles Otero | With: Melisa Liebenthal, Victoria D’Amuri, Camila Magliano, Sofia Mele, Josefina Roveta, Michelle Sterzovsky | Print/ Sales: Eugenia Campos Guevara | www.facebook.com/laslindaspelicula
When they were young, Melisa Liebenthal and her friends were really close. Now the filmmaker is an adult, she and her friends look back on their childhoods and teen years, and how they developed into women. To this end, she filmed them during dinner parties and talked to them individually with photo albums at the ready. Liebenthal and her friends reminisced using these. How did they feel as children? What was puberty like for them? How do they see themselves now? But also: why are women still expected to primarily be attractive? In the meantime, Liebenthal reflects on her uncomfortable relationship with the camera using her own childhood photos and videos. Why is she mistaken for a lesbian or even a man so often? Why does she seem to deviate from the norm and what is that actually? This playful, autobiographical reconstruction of her still-young life attempts to unravel the essential life questions facing this woman in her 20s.
45TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM
53