Tommaso Barbaro

Né ombra né luce

The decades-long story of a monumental container of utopias: the former Marchiondi-Spagliardi Institute, located in the western suburbs of Milan.

Food for Profit

The film exposes the links between Agrifood and politics. With a pool of international experts it analyses the many problems related to factory farming: water pollution, migrants exploitation, biodiversity loss and antibiotic resistance.

Terra Nova, The Land of Long Shadows

Antarctica (1988): a ship must escape from the grip of the ice to reach Terra Nova Bay. The Italian icebreaker Laura Bassi, in 2023, follows the same route and reaches the southernmost point on the planet ever reached by a ship.

The last slice of rainbow

A boy is given a rainbow and rolls it up in his pocket, but soon learns that he cannot hold on to it forever.

Oceans Are the Real Continents

Alex and Edith, a young couple in their 30s, live their relationship made up of small gestures and everyday life among the ruins of Cuban buildings. Milagros, an elderly woman now retired, tries to survive by selling peanuts and spends her days listening to the radio and reading old letters. Frank and Alain, two nine-year-old friends, go to school and dream of emigrating together to the United States to become Major League Baseball players. Against the backdrop of San Antonio De Los Baños, a town in inland Cuba where time seems to stand still, these three narratives and their respective worlds unfold. Over this mosaic of contemporaneity, however, brought to life through the characters' memories, hovers the specter of separation, the true great scourge of Cuban society.

Pinoquo

A subway station at night. A group of sixteen-year-olds is having a discussion. They are planning to enter a school and paint a graffiti. They argue with Cora, one of the group, for bringing along a boy she is going out with. The teenagers embark on a vandalism spree in the corridors of the empty school, setting off a night of turmoil and paranoia, of betrayal and violence.

Eschaton Ad

An apocalyptic film is suddenly interrupted by a strange ad. A man in suit and tie appears to deliver a message to the spectators and the director.

Frente a Guernica

Painted by Picasso in 1937, Guernica is a universal icon against the war. In 2014, the artists Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi conceived a new film that tells the history of 20th century upon the painting. In 2023, years after Angela’s passing, Yervant accomplishes this task.

Happy New Year, Jim

It's New Year's Eve. Jim and Morten are playing videogames all night long, like every day. But Morten tonight is uncomfortable.

Inchei

Armando, a 15-year-old Roma teenager, lives with his mother and siblings in the suburbs of Milan. The family is about to leave the shacks to move to Berlin, where his mother’s partner found a job and a house. In the two days before departure, Armando moves through his teenage friends, his first love and a nostalgia for a Milan that is now home.

Playground

2006, Northern Italy. In a provincial playground, a young mother and her children are waiting for their friends. Their arrival is imminent, the chessboard is ready.

un/Hook

"A group of jazz musicians come to a recording studio to play a jam session together. Their improvisation is matched to the rhythm of a tape of freely available footage from security cameras around the world. People and animals, city and nature, joys and tragedies. In conjunction with music, the videos are stripped of their original surveillance function and become vague, abstract, liberated images." -Ji.hlava IDFF 2021

The Rat's Angle

Carmelo is a prosecutor who lives under protection with his son, Nicola. One night, while having dinner, Nicola lets slip the fact that in school other kids tease him, calling him "rat", as rats live in hiding. Carmelo understands this is a crucial moment in his child's growth, and chooses his words wisely. He starts telling Nicola a tale. The tale of the Rat's Angle. That same evening, late at night, Nicola and Carmelo are hiding under the bed, scared. Some men are trying to break into the house, screaming death threats. Carmelo looks at his son, he knows how to calm him down: he reminds him of the rat they talked about at dinner. The hitmen are now in the room. Carmelo closes his eyes, building up courage. He knows this is the last time he will have to. Then he jumps out of hiding.

Closing Time

Returning from a dinner party with friends, a young couple finds themselves locked outside their house, and have to deal with the remains of their relationship.

Closing Time

Returning from a dinner party with friends, a young couple finds themselves locked outside their house, and have to deal with the remains of their relationship.

ZONA/

Milan, western suburbs. In one of the nine districts ("zone") of the city, the students of the "Rosa Luxemburg" trade school meditate over the meaning of living in the suburbs. And they do so using their smartphones, filming their days and looking for a common thread among their lives. Crossing and mixing video-diaries, documentary shooting and fictional scenes, the project struggles to take a definite shape: every character and perspective channels the tale in a different direction, escaping from linear narrative lines and bringing us to some kind of archipelago.

ZONA/

Milan, western suburbs. In one of the nine districts ("zone") of the city, the students of the "Rosa Luxemburg" trade school meditate over the meaning of living in the suburbs. And they do so using their smartphones, filming their days and looking for a common thread among their lives. Crossing and mixing video-diaries, documentary shooting and fictional scenes, the project struggles to take a definite shape: every character and perspective channels the tale in a different direction, escaping from linear narrative lines and bringing us to some kind of archipelago.

Love is a Dog

A series of unforeseen accidents collide with a seemingly happy young couple and their dog, revealing devastating lies, betrayals and their true selves.

Suole di vento - Storie di Goffredo Fofi

Goffredo Fofi does not want to be considered an intellectual but he has spent his life founding magazines, writing books, reviewing movies. The film portrays his tireless political and cultural work, his encounters with famous figures, the extra-parliamentary groups, ideological excesses, discovering new authors and directors. Social work as a political resource. The profile of a heretical intellectual and an extraordinary cultural organizer reveals a very critical view of Italian society, its power mechanisms, and the injustice that leaves a mark on it.

The Huddle

Though separated by a stretch of sea, Glasgow and Belfast share elements of political, sporting and religious culture rooted in the difficult, unresolved events faced by the Irish community during the twentieth century. The Huddle tells the stories of two Irish communities brought together by a devotion to the Celtic Football Club, and a shared faith in football. Exploring the contradictions between two cities facing radical ideological divides yet brought together by full stadiums, these are the interwoven and personal accounts of journalists, musicians, political militants, IRA fighters-all united by their love of football-on what it means to be Irish.

Gli Atomici Fotonici

Giacomo drags his son to a club for the selection of a musical talent. Will he be able to move his son out of his own insecurities?

Verdiana

After a big fight, a couple wakes up with an unbelievable problem: he can't speak and she can't hear anything. Doctors and exams are useless. A female Zen Master and a very special plant come to their aid.

War and Peace

How to film war? «War and Peace» tells the story of the century-old relationship between cinema and war, from the time of their first encounter, way back in 1911 with the Italian invasion of Libya, up to the present day. Forging ahead from the images captured by the pioneers of cinema to today’s twitter feeds, following young soldiers as they are trained to film war, the alliance between cinema and war appears to be a powerful one.

The Inner Mountain

Saint Anthony, Abbot of the Desert, protector of animals, is a central figure in the Italian countryside, where fortune depends on the health of the animals. To heal his donkey, Antonio asks the village priest to bless the sick animal. Faced with his refusal, the young farmer confides directly in the Saint, hoping that he will perform a miracle.

The White Wall

A principal and teacher conspire to protect their students from an invisible predator lurking inside their school. Based on a true story.

The Pace of Water

Domenico, an old shepherd, spends his days with his sheep in high altitude, without electricity or water. Nisida, a 90-year-old widow, moved by her faith, decides to undertake a pilgrimage to the Hermitage of San Bartolomeo. Nicola, a retired fisherman, lives with a white cat in the ruins of his village. Three solitary figures, in the land of Abruzzo, resilient to time and carrying on the old ways, who tune into the “pace of the water.” A contemplative and atmospheric homage to the ancient peasant tradition, as well as a farewell nod to a vanishing way of life.

Mud Road

In South Ethiopia, an ambulance driver has to bring a young lady to the hospital for delivery, but the nearest one is 300 km far from the village. It’s a long journey along a road full of mud.

Talking to Control

Italy, a few minutes into the future. Hera is linked to the neural global communication system known as “Control” that dominates the behavior of all the world population. The girl manages to free herself and to create a communication circuit isolated from control with her partner Aphrodite, but Dr. Routine, an agent of Control, takes action to eliminate this anomaly: however Hera manages to link Dr. Routine to the closed circuit put together by Aphrodite and her, a premise of a possible revolution and of the end of Control.

Ferine

A woman wanders in a big and empty parking lots following a man who she seems to want to ambush. From her gestures something furious and menacing emerges. Everything seems to draw back to a woods beyond her abandoned home, a place that hides the true nature of her actions.

Libellula gentile. Fabio Pusterla, il lavoro del poeta

A film about the Swiss Italian poet Fabio Pusterla and his creative poetic process, his struggle to find an honest language, one which adheres to the personal experience and is able to unfold a hidden truth that creates a strong and profound bond with the other, with his public.

Blu

A nocturnal voyage into the bowels of the Earth. The camera follows the work of a machine that is digging tunnels for new underground railway lines. A short film that starts from the darkness to slowly approach the light, when the last fragment of rock falls and the workers’ eternal night comes to an end. A film that shows the inextricable bond between man and machine.

The Cormorants

In the summer of their twelfth year Matteo and Samuele spend their days between the river, the forest and the shopping center, but compared to previous years, something is changing. The game becomes boring, imagination gives way to discovery, adventure turns into life experience. A summer without beginning and without end, the story about a friendship, an age and a land which are obliged to change with the inexorable passage of time.

The Ice Builders

An urgent portrait of the people of the Zanskar valley and their struggle to survive extreme living conditions aggravated by climate change.

The Ice Builders

An urgent portrait of the people of the Zanskar valley and their struggle to survive extreme living conditions aggravated by climate change.

Anna Piaggi: Fashion Visionary

The world of fashion, between the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Noughties, had a key character that embodied its spirit and told the tale: journalist Anna Piaggi, living witness of that contamination between art, society and culture that changed fashion and sanctioned its success on a global scale. The daughter of a manager for La Rinascente (Milan's iconic high-end shopping mall whose foundation goes back to 1865), Karl Lagerfeld's muse, "a poet with her clothes" in the words of Bill Cunningham, her life is retraced through interviews with designers (Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Stephen Jones, Manolo Blahnik, and more) together with archival images from four decades of fashion history.

The Storming of the Winter Palace

Ėjzenštejn's unrealised dream was to make a film adaptation of The Capital. Mario Blaconà uses archives from the working-class world and the direct testimony of Vittorio Alfieri to recount the birth of the Red Brigades in Italy. We are no longer in Russia, we are no longer in the Winter Palace. A powerful historical testimony of a still obscure period in the history of our country.

Monte Amiata

Monte Amiata is a residential complex in the Gallaratese neighbourhood in Milan, designed by architects Carlo Aymonino and Aldo Rossi at the end of the 1960s. It was created with the intention of representing a parallel microcosm, a sort of alternative city of the future. In referring to its unusual colour and shape, its inhabitants call it the red dinosaur.