This season will feature a selection of biographical documentaries: films depicting life-long struggles against hostile environments, suspicious governments, and absorbing, annihilating memories. Stories otherwise left untold, that manage to represent countries through the lives of their citizens.

by Annick van Wijk, Netherlands, 2007, 53'

Wed 17th - 6 pm, Teatro Strehler - Scatola Magica
Short Films

A sullyedo falu, by Marton Szirmai, Hungary, 2007, 23'

D-tunnel, by Avi Levi, Israel, 2007, 12'

Ottica Zero, by Maja Borg, UK, 2007, 12'

Breadmakers, by Yasmin Fedda, UK, 2007, 100'

Tue 16th - 9 pm, Parco - Piazza del Cannone

In 2007, this section represented a challenge. A film season featuring special, uncommon biographies - biographies that are extraordinary exactly because they depict the lives of ordinary people. And people - ordinary people - have proved to be extraordinary.

So we just couldn't help repeating that positive experience. Also because filmmakers - and in particular video makers, be they amateurs or professionals - seem to feel more and more the urge to tell private stories, to fix on film or digitally record the experiences of people who would otherwise be forgotten.

The urge to talk about an out-of-the-ordinary priest, a priest who fights for the rights of illegal Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic. His life is documented in the powerful film The Price of Sugar, this section's cutting-edge feature.

And then: traditional jobs and traditional workers still holding on in a globalized world; a collective of handicapped people who manage a bakery; a tramp who intimately portrays a difficult rehabilitation.
All this leads us to one, quite rhetorical question: are ordinary people really common?