The Verona International Film Festival concluded its seventh edition last night at the Multisala Rivoli, located right in the heart of the historical city center. With a full house every night, the festival team would like to thank all guests for their enthusiasm. A big thank you also to all filmmakers for sending in their work. Out of over a fifteen hundred submissions, twenty one wonderful films from Italy and around the world made it to the final selection for 2022. Verona International Film Festival is pleased to share with you today the jury results for this year's awards:

 

Best Narrative Feature Film: Courage (Mexico) by Rubén Rojo Aura. “A 76 year old actress with a retina disease that is leaving her blind, is afraid of losing her place in the theater company where she belongs. This moment collides with the arrival of his 50-year-old son to her home, in his attempt to recover from alcoholism. Her personal crisis, will take her to try to meet again with her son after many years of distance.”

 

Best Documentary Feature Film: God's Children (Spain) by Ekain Irigoien. “Javier and Romerales sleep under one of the many cornices around the touristic Plaza de la Opera in Madrid. There, their friendship becomes a hymn to life, death and dignity.”

 

Best Narrative Short Film: Mamma (Norway) by Aslak Danbolt. “It’s Christmas Eve, and Synnøve is searching for her drug-addicted daughter Michelle in an almost desolated city. Synnøve and Michelle are mother and daughter in real life and play versions of themselves in a story that is very close to their own lives.”

 

Best Documentary Short Film: Celentano's Seasickness (Italy) by Saverio Cappiello. “Loredano, known as Celentano, due to seasickness has never been able to be a fisherman, his dream since he was a child. Now he works in a bar and waits for Alex, his nephew, who has recently started working as a fisherman, to give him a gift that initiates him into that world that is water and that he has never been able to touch.”

 

Best Super Short Film: 652 miles = 0 (Or The Wonderful Convenience of Videocalling) (UK) by Giulio Gobbetti. “During a time of quarantine, global distances contract. The 652 miles separating the director’s London home from his grandmother in Italy are not any different than the distance between her and her neighbours. As most interpersonal relationships are brought into the online world, there is no better opportunity to teach her remotely how to do video-calls. At times funny, at times deadly serious, this short is a touching account of a familiar relationship.”

 

Best Animated Film: Chasse Galerite (USA) by Brian Hawkins. “Chasse Galerite is a passionate hunter whose untamed desire often leads him into trouble. Set in the Illinois Country in the late 17th century, this humorous and imaginative folktale, cherished by Missouri's French Creole community, is told in the local dialect by one of its last native speakers.”

 

Best Experimental Film: Forget Me Not (Italy) by Giuseppe Petruzzellis, Fabio Marin. “Gilda is a middle aged woman, mother and wife. One day she realizes she's having problems setting the table. These are her first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Through family footage and poetic visions, the stages of her illness become a stream of images on the breach of oblivion.”

 

Best Music Video: Recall (Slovakia) by Erik Jasaň. “An oppressed woman, living in a poor village in eastern Slovakia, where alcohol is cheaper than regular food, tries to find her son after he runs away from home. If she decides to resist her husband, she may never find her son. Can such a woman stand up to her husband?”

 

Best Italian Film: Where Do We Go From Here (Italy) by Antonello Schioppa. “A woman's lifeless body is lying on a room's floor. A shocked man is staring at it. Beyond the closed door, someone is quietly trying to get in: he's a 9 years old child. These three are a family. Or what's left.”

 

Congratulations!

 

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