FESTIVAL Italia / Regno Unito
In collaborazxione con Cineuropa News

Cinema Made in Italy, edizione numero 9 di Vittoria Scarpa

26/02/2019 - Dal 26 febbraio al 3 marzo, torna il meglio del cinema italiano recente a Londra. Apre 'Loro' di Paolo Sorrentino
Si terrà oggi , dal 26 febbraio, a domenica 3 marzo, al Ciné Lumière di Londra, la nona edizione di Cinema Made in Italy, lo speciale appuntamento organizzato da Istituto Luce Cinecittà e dall'Istituto italiano di cultura di Londra che porta nel Regno Unito alcune delle migliori produzioni italiane recenti in anteprima assoluta.
Sono nove i titoli in programma quest’anno. Ad aprire la rassegna sarà il ritratto di Silvio Berlusconi del regista premio Oscar Paolo Sorrentino, Loro – il film uscirà nelle sale britanniche il 19 aprile distribuito da Curzon Artificial Eye. Gli altri titoli in selezione sono: Euforia di Valeria Golino e Troppa grazia di Gianni Zanasi, presentati rispettivamente al Certain Regard e alla Quinzaine des Réalisateurs dell’ultimo Festival di Cannes; Ricordi? di Valerio Mieli, selezionato alle Giornate degli Autori di Venezia; Ovunque proteggimi di Bonifacio Angius (visto al Torino Film Festival), L’ospite di Duccio Chiarini (debutto a Locarno) e Notti magiche di Paolo Virzì (film di chiusura della Festa del cinema di Roma); infine, Saremo giovani e bellissimi di Letizia Lamartire (Venezia, Settimana della Critica) e la commedia surreale di Paolo Zucca, L’uomo che comprò la luna.
Ai nove titoli recenti selezionati, si affiancherà la proiezione di Il conformista, capolavoro del 1970 del compianto Bernardo Bertolucci, scomparso lo scorso novembre.
Come nelle passate edizioni, saranno ospiti di Cinema Made in Italy molti dei registi che presenteranno i loro film al pubblico del festival e parteciperanno a sessioni di Q&A.

FESTIVAL Belgio
The Most Beautiful Couple e Jellyfish premiati a Mons di Aurore Engelen
25/02/2019 - Il film di Sven Taddicken si è aggiudicato il Gran Premio e il Premio per l'interpretazione, mentre il lungometraggio di James Gardner ha ricevuto il Premio alla sceneggiatura e il Premio Cineuropa.
The 34th Mons International Film Festival drew to a close on Friday night with the unveiling of its winners’ list and the triumph of both The Most Beautiful Couple and Jellyfish. In The Most Beautiful Couple, German director Sven Taddicken follows the journey of a couple traumatised by a sexual assault that takes place while they are on holiday in Majorca. Liv is raped by a group of men right in front of her helpless partner, Malte. Two years later, Malte bumps into one of the assailants in the street, which reawakens a memory in the couple that almost proves to be more destructive than the assault itself. The movie pocketed the Grand Prix as well as the Best Acting Award for Maximilian Brückner, Luise Heyer, Jasna Fritzi Bauer and Florian Bartholomaï.

There was another film that went home clutching two prizes: Jellyfish by James Gardner. In line with the great British tradition of films rooted in social topics, which explore the trials and tribulations of day-to-day life using humour, Jellyfish follows Sarah, a 15-year-old girl who is mistreated both at school and at home. Then she has an epiphany and finds her niche by trying her hand at stand-up. The movie picked up the Best Screenplay Award in addition to the Cineuropa Prize.
The Audience Award was bestowed upon the French film Head Above Water, the feature debut by director Margot Bonhomme, which tells the story of Elisa, a hot-headed and passionate teenage girl who finds herself alone with her father after her mother leaves home – together, they must look after her disabled sister. The cast includes Cédric Kahn and Diane Rouxel, a young French actress who rose to fame in Larry Clark’s The Smell of Us. The Be TV Award was presented to another French film set against a backdrop of separation and adolescence: Real Love by Claire Burger, toplined by Bouli Lanners.

THE MONS International Film Festival, which took a year off in 2018, should unspool again in 2020, as announced by its new general delegate, Maxime Dieu.
Here is the complete list of winners:
Festival Grand Prix
The Most Beautiful Couple - Sven Taddicken (Germany/France)
Best Director Award
Night Comes On - Jordana Spiro (USA)
Best Screenplay Award
Jellyfish - James Gardner (UK)
Best Acting Award
Maximilian Brückner, Luise Heyer, Jasna Fritzi Bauer and Florian Bartholomaï – The Most Beautiful Couple
Cineuropa Jury Prize
Jellyfish – James Gardner
City of Mons Audience Award
Head Above Water – Margaux Bonhomme (France)
BeTV Award
Real Love - Claire Burger (France/Belgium)
Best Short Film Award
Vihta - François Bierry (France/Belgium)
Belgian Critics’ Award
Accord Parental – Benjamin Belloir

James Gardner • Regista di Jellyfish
"Jellyfish è parte del dibattito che promuove una maggiore comprensione di come possiamo migliorare la nostra società"
di Valerio Caruso
25/02/2019 - Abbiamo parlato con il regista britannico James Gardner, il cui film d'esordio, Jellyfish, ha vinto il Premio Cineuropa al Mons International Film Festival
Beyond its indisputable acting quality, James Gardner's Jellyfish is a testament to the filmmaker's talent, demonstrating a real sense of atmosphere and accuracy, and a promising mastery of shots, lighting and music. He is an emerging talent whose career development we await with eager curiosity.

CINEUROPA PRIZE at the 34th MONS International Film Festival
LES ARCS 2018

Review: Jellyfish by Fabien Lemercier
19/12/2018 - The British director James Gardner shows promising talent with a first film that features some stinging social realism "Are you looking for something easy?", "Anyone can learn a routine and stick to it, but that's not what we're looking for here. It needs to come from somewhere deeper." It’s with these words, placed in the mouth of one of his main characters, that the British filmmaker James Gardner somehow manages to distil the colour and ambition of Jellyfish, his first feature. The film does admittedly travel the beaten path of a coming-of-age story, but focuses its plot on a teenager and her dysfunctional family against a backdrop of uncompromising social realism (in true Ken Loach style), delving into the daily life of the working class in a seaside city bathed in grey skies and the flashing lights and sounds of arcade games, all while trying to find an original means of escaping the doldrums of life via self-taught stand-up comedy.

Screened in the Playtime programme at the 10th Les Arcs Film Festival, Jellyfish has already garnered numerous awards since its premiere at Tribeca, including at Edinburgh (Best Actress Awards for Liv Hill and Sinéad Matthews), Dinard (four trophies including the Grand Prix, Best Screenplay and Critics' Prize) and Rome (Best Film in the Alice Nella Cittá section). The younger of its two major actresses has won numerous awards, has been nominated for Best Breakthrough Performance at the British Independent Film Awards and has received special mentions at both Dinard and Rome.
"Mum doesn't feel well." At 15, Sarah (Hill) finds herself, as we are soon to discover, with some pretty serious responsibilities, as her mother, Karen (Matthews), practically mute, doesn't seem to leave her bed or the sofa, sitting in front of the television as if she were hypnotised. And as for her father, he doesn’t seem to be on the scene, leaving the teenager entirely responsible for the daily lives of her siblings: her brother, Marcus (Henry Lile) and her sister, Lucy (Jemima Newman), who she must take and collect from primary school, pick up, dress, feed, reassure, etc. As money is tight, Sarah also works part-time at a nursery, where her boss (Angus Barnett) operates shamelessly and where various customers offer her extra cash in exchange for a quick hand job.
A precarious existence, which fails to improve when the girl realises that the family owes three months’ rent and that her mother's benefits have been suspended – the latter revealing herself to be bipolar and subject to enthusiastic spending sprees, especially at Dreamland Amusement Park. Grappling with an increasingly serious situation, which she continues to hide from the outside world, Sarah, who is very strong-willed, is encouraged (a lot) by her drama teacher (Cyril Nri) to pursue her potential in stand-up comedy. She begins to write a skit while struggling desperately to keep her family afloat. But the boat starts to sink, and the world is a cruel place...
Beyond the film's indisputable general acting quality (and by proxy excellent direction of the film’s cast, which includes numerous novices) and a plot that fails (as is often the case with first films) to pick up the pace somewhat in its home stretch, Jellyfish is a testament to James Gardner's filmmaking talent, demonstrating a real sense of atmosphere and accuracy, and a promising mastery of shots, light (Peter Riches is the film’s director of photography) and music (composed by Victor Hugo Fumagalli). An emerging talent, whose career development we await with eager curiosity.
Jellyfish is due to be released in the UK on 15 February by Republic Film Distribution. International sales are being handled by Bankside Films.
Cineuropa News: We chatted to British director James Gardner, (nella foto) whose debut feature, Jellyfish, premiered at Tribeca last year and has just won the Cineuropa Prize at the Mons International Film Festival.

CINEUROPA: What was the main motivation for making this film?
James Gardner: The initial idea behind Jellyfish was to tell the story of a teenage girl who discovers a hidden talent and examine how her family circumstances suffocate it. I had the idea for Sarah, her family and Margate… That all came as one, but it took a little time before I realised I was telling the story of a young carer. I knew what a young carer was, but it wasn’t until I really started developing the idea and researching properly that I came to realise to what extent it is an indisputable crisis. There are more than 800,000 young carers – young people between the ages of 11 and 18, looking after one or more family members, unpaid – in England alone, and it is unacceptable that we’re not supporting these vulnerable young people better. It saddens me to say it, but despite Jellyfish being a work of fiction, everything that was written into the film was inspired by incidents that actually happened.
Do you see your film as delivering a political message?
I think it’s virtually impossible to create art that is completely apolitical, as it will always exist within a context dictated by time and space. As a filmmaker, you have to embrace that, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Jellyfish delivers an overtly political message, as it is not a propaganda film, and nor was it conceived to make a political point; it just evolved and is being viewed that way because of the day and age we live in. Jellyfish is part of the conversation that promotes a better understanding of how we can improve our society.
How did you work with the actors, especially the astonishing Liv Hill?
Because of how low-budget the film is, I had no real hope of scheduling any rehearsal time with the cast all together. Therefore, a large part of my preparation with the actors was just the one-on-one conversations we had prior to the shoot. I was very lucky to be able to cast the wonderful actors I did, because there was no financial incentive for them to work on the film, as to make the film possible, we conceived of the entire production as a socialist enterprise, where everyone, from the top down, would be offered deferred payment only. It was the only way we could afford to make it. As for Sarah, it was incredibly difficult to find a young actor capable of carrying the weight of an entire feature film on her shoulders. And after about seven months of searching, I thought that perhaps we had written an impossible screenplay. In the end, after all the auditions, self-tapes, showcases, emails, phone calls and so on, it came down to a piece of luck. Cyril Nri [Mr Hale] had been offered a job that clashed with our shooting window, and his agent called to ask what was happening with the film and if I’d found Sarah. I hadn’t, and I was on the verge of postponing the shoot for the second time, when the agent offered up a self-tape for a client they had just signed. It was Liv. And it may sound like a cliché, but it’s true that within the first five seconds of watching that self-tape, I knew I’d found Sarah. And the reason I’m telling this story is to highlight just how easy it was working with her, because she’s truly gifted. She is the definition of a natural.
The film has quite a dark atmosphere. Can you tell us more about how you worked with the lighting?
I really wanted the movie to have as much of a naturalistic aesthetic as possible. Jellyfish is a drama that deals with confrontational real-world issues, and I knew that I would create the most compelling, strongest version of the story by doing everything I could to make the film feel as “real” to the audience as possible. One of my favourite scenes is the showdown between Karen and Sarah, where Sarah is in darkness and Karen is lit so brightly that you can see the detailing in the whites of her eyes. It’s magnetic. And actually, for a long time in the edit, we weren’t with Sarah enough in that scene, because the editor and I had completely fallen under Karen’s spell, and I think that’s definitely to do with the way she is lit. It’s that contrast between the light and the dark, and comedy and tragedy, that defines this scene. It runs through the entire film and characterises its tonal quality.


LECCE 2019
Dodici film in lizza per il 10° Premio Mario Verdone a Lecce
di Vittoria Scarpa

22/02/2019 - Il riconoscimento, riservato ad autori di opere prime che si siano contraddistinti nell’ultima stagione, sarà consegnato durante il 20° Festival del Cinema Europeo di Lecce (8-13 aprile)
Annunciati i 12 titoli in lizza per il Premio Mario Verdone, che quest’anno festeggia il suo decimo anniversario. Il riconoscimento, rivolto a giovani autori italiani di opera prima che si siano particolarmente contraddistinti nell'ultima stagione cinematografica, sarà consegnato come ogni anno nell’ambito del Festival del Cinema Europeo di Lecce, la cui 20ma edizione si terrà dall’8 al 13 aprile 2019.
I concorrenti di quest’anno (tra cui saranno scelti i tre finalisti) sono: Pietro Belfiore, Davide Bonacina, Andrea Fadenti, Andrea Mazzarella, Davide Rossi per Si muore tutti democristiani; Alessandro Capitani per In viaggio con Adele; Ciro D'Emilio per Un giorno all’improvviso; Damiano e Fabio D'Innocenzo per La terra dell’abbastanza; Margherita Ferri per Zen sul ghiaccio sottile; Letizia Lamartire per Saremo giovani e bellissimi; Matteo Martinez per Tonno spiaggiato; Francesca Mazzoleni per Succede; Daniele Misischia per The End? L’inferno fuori; Fulvio Risuleo per Guarda in alto, Antonio Pisu per Nobili bugie; Emanuele Scaringi per La profezia dell’armadillo.

Come ogni anno saranno Carlo, Luca e Silvia Verdone a scegliere il vincitore dell’edizione 2019 tra gli autori individuati in collaborazione con il Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia e il Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani. “Il Premio Mario Verdone continua a mantenere, con rigore, scelte di assoluta qualità riguardanti i nuovi autori del cinema italiano”, sottolineano i tre fratelli. “L’abbondanza di ottime pellicole spesso sfuggite al grande pubblico, renderà il nostro compito assai delicato e probabilmente tormentato”.

Le precedenti edizioni del premio sono state vinte da: Susanna Nicchiarelli per Cosmonauta, Aureliano Amadei per 20 sigarette, Andrea Segre per Io sono Li, Claudio Giovannesi per Alì ha gli occhi azzurri, Matteo Oleotto per Zoran, il mio nipote scemo, Sebastiano Riso per Più buio di mezzanotte, Duccio Chiarini per Short Skin, Marco Danieli per La ragazza del mondo e, l'anno scorso, da Roberto De Paolis per Cuori puri.

bUON CINEMA A TUTTI.