Trento Film Festival: four films on the mountain as a destination for rediscovering oneself

The mountain and nature as places to find yourself. Regaining the grace of slowness, a renewed capacity for observation, immersion in the power of the landscape are the elements of a possible rebirth. It’s the ideas that inspire the Trent Film Festival, the film festival from 28 April to 7 May. Trento becomes, as has been the case since 1952 until today, the international capital of cinema and mountain cultures, with over 130 films and more than 150 events for all ages.

Many Italian and international guests, such as mountaineers Herve Barmasse, Tamara Lunger, Alex Txikon, Silvia Vidal, David Gottler, Thomas Huberthe writer and climber Anna Flemingthe explorer Alex Bellinithe writers Mauro Corona, Frances Melandri, Henry Camanni, Titian Fratus And David Longothe actress Violante Placidothe photographer Jim Herringtonthe journalist and screenwriter Andrew Purgatoriand many others.

The 71st edition opens with the international preview of “At walking pace” (Sur les chemins noirs), directed by Denis Imbertwhich will be released in our theaters this fall.

The very popular section “Destination…” returns in 2023 to explore landscapes and cultures of the African continent, turning his gaze to theEthiopiato invite the viewer to confront images, stories, landscapes and traditions of a unique and fascinating country, facing epochal geopolitical phenomena, too often ignored or underestimated.

There will be no shortage of proposals from T4Futurethe section of the Festival dedicated to the new generations: a rich program of screenings, workshops and activities designed to encourage image education and promote issues related to sustainable development, environmental protection and active citizenship education.

“At walking pace”

The film is based on the autobiographical book of the same name by Sylvain Tessonan author particularly loved in Trento where last year the film The Snow Panther, in which he starred together with the nature photographer Vincent Munier, won the Silver Gentian. Sylvain Tesson in August 2014, following a fall from several meters, after having climbed in the grip of alcohol fumes on the facade of a friend’s chalet, remained in a coma for a long time and with multiple fractures. His hospital ordeal lasted about a year. And it is at this point that Tesson, having partially recovered his motor faculties, decides to cross France on foot. Thus begins a long walk in the peripheral, sometimes harsh and inhospitable landscape of the country, which, in the film, becomes the journey that Pierre, the film’s protagonist, takes Jean Dujardin.

In his journey towards recovery, Pierre travels only the “black paths”, the less traveled and known ones, as if to seek a secondary entrance to life. Tesson offers us the metaphorical journey of a sick humanity that can only survive if it does not recover its deep relationship with nature. A highly topical message that becomes extreme in Songs of Earth – “The Song of the earth” directed by Margreth Olin.

“The Song of the Earth”

Produced by Wim Wenders And Liv Ullmann, “The Song of the Earth” is the magnificent celebration in images and music of the extreme western Norwegian landscape of the Oldedalen Valley. In the places where she grew up and where her parents lived, Margreth Olin thanks to a sound design that merges with the images, sublimating them, it creates a space of full immersion. The notes give music to the wind and waterfalls. Aerial shots pursue new dimensions, as in few cases cinema has sought. Subjectivity thins out, man becomes a complement and no longer a centre. The viewer is offered an invitation to a real existential journey in an unusual dimension where we are forced to abandon our lifelines but also our blocks. Life and death fade, giving a new, lighter meaning to our being present.

The key to “Songs of Earth” is therefore that of feeling more than understanding, in the awareness that any balance, even if primordial, can falter. The life of the parents, elderly and close to the end, creates a parallelism with what is happening to nature. And if the cycle of nature, in a process of connection to it, appears acceptable and normal, the threat of the Anthropocene blinds and leads us astray. Margreth Olin’s story marks one of the most important cinematic experiences of recent years in the documentary field.

“Wildlife”

The transition from the bond of Olin’s parents to the couple of Kristine and Duog Tompkins, it always takes place in the sign of a deep feeling of love. The latest National Geographic production, “Wildlife”signed by the Oscar-winning directors for “FREE ONLY”, Chai Vasarhelyi And Jimmy Chin, traces the story of Kristine, former CEO of Patagonia and president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, in an epic love story that spans the decades, as wild as the landscapes she has pledged to protect throughout her life. A story that led them to make the largest donation of private land in history to create areas of protection of endless territories in southern Chile.

“respect”

For the closure, the festival plays at home by proposing the director’s debut film from Trentino Cecilia Draft Wolfalready awarded at the festival in 2017 for the documentary Ashamed, entirely shot in the nearby Cembra Valley with non-professional actors. The community of a mountain village appears externally as cohesive and linked by bonds of solidarity and commonality. However, reality hides dark sides with which the protagonists will be called to confront. An original and unusual film, locally sourced, also the result of the alliance between the Film Commission Südtirol and the Trentino Film Commission.