Latin American trio in the awards of the seventh edition of Working Title Film Festival – Festival del cinema del lavoro: the awards ceremony, Saturday, Nov. 16 at the Caracol Olol Jackson in Vicenza after a week of screenings at the Odeon Cinema, saw the winners among feature films Altamar (Costa Rica, Colombia, 2024, 76′) by Costa Rican director Ernesto Jara Vargas, which had its European premiere at WTFF7, among short films Motorrodillo (Colombia, 2022, 30′) by Colombian-Portorican director Alba Jaramillo, and in the experimental section Extraworks – “Chiara Rigione” Award I Suoni del Tempo (Venezuela, Cuba, Italy, Brazil, 2022, 15′) by Venezuelan director Jeissy Trompiz.
Special mentions were awarded for feature films to The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Who Lived for Twenty and Eight Years All Alone on an Inhabited Island and Said It Was His (Belgium, 2023, 75′) by Belgian director Benjamin Deboosere, for short films to Avitaminosis (Ukraine, Czech Republic, 2023, 26′) by Ukrainian director Kateryna Ruzhyna, for Extraworks – “Chiara Rigione” Award to La presa del Palazzo di Inverno by Italian director Mario Blaconà (Italy, 2024, 20′).
The Young Jury awarded the best film prize to Avitaminosis by Kateryna Ruzhyna and special mention to It Takes a Village (Armenia, France, 2023, 23′) by Armenian director Ophelia Harutyunyan.
The awards were made by artisan Augusto Battistini using reclaimed wood.
Festival guests
More than thirty authors from all over the world were hosted in Vicenza during the festival days, where they presented their works discussing them with the audience that attended the festival watching the 27 films in competition. At Cinema Odeon, producer Giulia Clerici presented Altamar, in its European premiere, U.S. director Yoni Golijov presented When We Fight in its Italian premiere, Belgians Benjamin Deboosere and Louisiana Mees-Fongang presented The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe… and Fikri, respectively, in their Italian premiere, and French director Livia Lattanzio presented Andy et Charlie in its Italian premiere. Chilean Juan Francisco González presented and discussed Fantasmagoría, Colombian-Portorican Alba Jaramillo Motorrodillo, while among the Italians Lorenzo Casali presented Banavóis, Luca Quagliato and Laura Carrer (directors) and Guglielmo Trupia (editor) presented Life is a game, Simona Brambilla and Chiara Granata presented Le Malcontente, and Emma Onesti presented the short film Tatiana. Serbian director Mladen Djordjevic discussed the Italian premiere feature Working Class Goes to Hell.
Numerous guests also attended Saturday at Caracol Olol Jackson for the Extraworks section: Lorenzo Picarazzi presented Il resto come sempre, Mario Blaconà La presa del Palazzo di Inverno in the presence also of the protagonist Vittorio Alfieri, Ilaria Pezone Ritratto temporale III – Alessandra, Federico Frefel Quasi perfetto, while I Suoni del Tempo was presented by editor Milena Fiore of Aamod – Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico, which co-produced the film.
Also guests at the festival were several members of the four juries formed by Cecilia Bozza Wolf, Chiara Càmpara and Federico Francioni (Feature & Short Films), Giulia Cosentino, Francesco Montagner and Tommaso Santambrogio (Short Films), Vanina Lappa, Morgan Menegazzo and Mariachiara Pernisa (Extraworks – “Chiara Rigione” Award), Emanuele Antolini, Bianca Bicchi, Elia Boschin, Marco De Bartolomeo, Manuel Fincato, Annalisa La Spina, Corina Manole and Laura Zamunaro (Young Jury). Also at the Caracol, Christoph Pennig, Simona Lonardo, Milena Fiore and, remotely connected, Antonio Borrelli, Federico Francioni and Jeissy Trompiz took part in the special event “Tribute to Chiara Rigione,” in memory of the director, editor and cultural worker who died prematurely in 2023.
The first Industry meeting on Nov. 7 at Zerogloss was attended by Elena Agosti, curator of the A&D Artigianato e Design project, Youssef DaLima, founder and filmmaker of Onymous Studios, Andrea Santini, sound and new media artist, and Aldo Macchi, project manager communication professionals Doc Creativity. The second Industry meeting on Nov. 11 at the Odeon Cinema brought together Ilaria Fantin, councillor for culture of the City of Vicenza, Jacopo Chessa, general director of the Veneto Film Commission, Marta Melina, Producer SMK Factory and OpenDDB, Damiano Monaco, director and producer Flash Future Film, and Marco Caberlotto, president of CNA Cinema e Audiovisivo Veneto.
The motivations
Feature Films & Medium-length Films
The jury composed of Cecilia Bozza Wolf, Chiara Càmpara, and Federico Francioni, decided to present the following awards:
Best film
Altamar by Ernesto Jara Vargas
In the context of a festival that celebrates the theme of work, Ernesto Jara Vargas’ Altamar stands out for its raw and poetic portrayal of a man whose body bears the marks of wearisome work, but whose spirit finds in the open sea a refuge from the alienation he feels on the land. The long fishing trips turn into a journey of introspection and tension, in which the sea represents both a prison and a call to freedom. With directorial sensitivity, the film constructs an immersive experience in Eli’s life, the precise and evocative cinematography depicts the repetitive rhythm of boat work as well as the silence and misery of home, creating a visual and sonic counterpoint to his existence between two worlds. Through an essential style and with narrative honesty, Jara Vargas takes us into the soul of the protagonist, creating a silent and powerful connection with the audience, and delivering a work that sensitively recounts the struggle for survival.
Special mention
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Who Lived for Twenty and Eight Years All Alone on an Inhabited Island and Said It Was His by Benjamin Deboosere
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Who Lived for Twenty and Eight Years all Alone on an Inhabited Island and Said It Was His rewrites the story of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, which has become a symbol of the colonialist myth of the white man as the bearer of civilisation. In their attempt to deconstruct the narrative, the director resorts to a gleeful satire, the character of Robinson is played by a black woman and the ‘uninhabited’ island is populated by wild goats offering life lessons. The saturated colours of the 16 mm film make up a surprising visual universe full of invention. Benjamin Deboosere has made a subversive and iconoclastic film that manages to be both full of humour and to affirm that we can tell in new ways the stories that fascinated us as children and shock us as adults.
Short-films
The jury composed of Giulia Cosentino, Francesco Montagner, and Tommaso Santambrogio decided to present the following awards:
Best film
Motorrodillo by Alba Jaramillo
Motorrodillo is a work that recounts a little-known labour category in its individual and collective dynamics, offering us an authentic and profound insight into the stratified community of a small Amazonian village.
The director, with an empathetic, determined and respectful prespective, represents the layered complexity of the characters and places she crosses on her journey along the unusual tracks of a marginality that is never exotic or didactic, but always profoundly human, punctuated by the concise editing and by the various stages of the journey. The result is a documentary and anthropological experience that stands out for its human value.
Special mention
Avitaminosis by Kateryna Ruzhyna
Avitaminosis is a vital film, full of energy, narrative and linguistic creative sparks. With originality, the film becomes a collective matter, transforming the intimate experience of the author from her personal space in the house to a reflection on the world outside, as well as the contradictions with which she processes the present. One has the feeling of attending a psychoanalytic session, on a journey through the filmmaker’s most turbulent formative years. With an unfiltered and uncompromising perspective, a syncopated rhythm and a free directing style, the film deals with a disorienting and critical reality, both politically and individually, while always maintaining a caustic and surgical irony.
Extraworks – Premio “Chiara Rigione”
The jury composed of Vanina Lappa, Morgan Menegazzo, and Mariachiara Pernisa decided to present the following awards:
Best film
The Sounds of Time by Jeissy Tropiz
for trying to overcome the incommunicability between men and the inexorability of time through the medium of film and for saving fragments of memory from human catastrophe.
Special mention
La presa del Palazzo di Inverno by Mario Blaconà
for letting us reflect on our recent past through the non-judgemental, greatly lucid testimony of Vittorio Alfieri; for making us question the present and what contemporary spaces are suitable for the formation of critical thought and concrete collective action.
Young jury
The jury composed of Emanuele Antolini, Bianca Bicchi, Elia Boschin, Marco De Bartolomeo, Manuel Fincato, Annalisa La Spina, Corina Manole, and Laura Zamunaro decided to present the following awards
Best film
Avitaminosis by Kateryna Ruzhyna
Just like the clinical condition from which it borrows its title, Kateryna Ruzhyna’s Avitaminosis seems to be structured around a structural deficiency, the lack of something that both author and viewer begin to chase from the very beginning of the short film. ‘Where is the truth?’ Kateryna’s heartfelt voice has no doubts: ‘it is there, beyond the boundaries of consciousness’. Thus begins an – inner and outer – journey that allows the audience and characters to delve right into the heart of the problem, which is at once political and generational, philosophical and existential, occupational and spiritual. This is a very peculiar type of research that Kateryna conducts with a scarcity of means, but with an aesthetic and technical awareness that is already decidedly above average: the expressive use of found footage, the daring positioning of the camera, the rhythmic editing of avant-garde ascendancy, and a voice over that narrates, remembers, deceives, brings us closer and distances us, connects and distances us. In line with the best tradition of modern cinema, Kateryna organises her work by playing on scraps, on gaps of form and meaning, on the conflict that runs through the image and that – above all – allows the ‘problem’ that is the subject of her research to be accepted, felt, and shared by each onbe of us. With these motivations the WTFF young jury awarded Kateryna Ruzhyna the Best Film prize.
Special mention
It Takes a Village by Ophelia Harutyunyan
Through a photography studied in detail, with a very elegant and symmetrical composition, Ophelia Harutyunyan’s film is a strong work that represents the voice of many women. The protagonists of this story face the difficulties of living and working in the fields, suffering the absence of male figures, who have emigrated abroad for work.
It Takes a Village is a brilliant film that, through a seemingly futile element such as a broken cupboard, waiting to be fixed by a husband who is not there, conveys the strength that must grow in the souls of women, the courage to raise their heads and grit their teeth, because no one will come to save them but themselves. Not a film that conveys hope, but one that wants to encourage all women to be resourceful, without waiting for something to fall from the sky and save them.
Promoters and partners
The festival, under the artistic direction of Marina Resta, is promoted by the association Laboratorio dell’inchiesta economica e sociale Aps, in partnership with Cinema Odeon, Caracol Olol Jackson, DocServizi and Zerogloss; under the patronage and financial support of the Veneto Region and the Municipality of Vicenza; with financial support from Fondazione Monte di Pietà di Vicenza, Cgil Vicenza, Cisl Vicenza, Cisl Vicenza Servizi, CNA Veneto Ovest, A&D Artigianato e Design; technical partners Scuola Superiore per Mediatori Linguistici di Vicenza e Rimini – FUSP, SHG Hotel de La Ville, Serimab, Rete Biblioteche Vicentine; media partners Bookciak Magazine, GoodJob! , Cinematographe.it, VeZ – Veneto ecologia Z generation; in collaboration with Premio Bookciak, Azione!, Casa di Cultura Popolare, IIS Boscardin.