01 Aug ACROSS by Irene Dorigotti

Venetian Nights 2023

ACROSS

by Irene Dorigotti
Italy, Switzerland, 2023, 77′, colour
Screenplay: Irene Dorigotti

Irene grew up in the Italian Alps in a family that loved travel and the scout culture. Now, while in Turin because the Holy Shroud is on display, Irene starts down a new path to faith. Her journey, teeming with playful encounters and small revelations, turns the film into a genuinely spiritual road movie. Yet Irene is restless, with no answers to her questions – until reality changes into a poetic universe. After Mexico’s syncretism and clamour, Vietnam’s hustle and bustle, and the temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Irene backs away from religion and embraces the sacred.

«The film I’ve made is a performance that blends fiction and reality. In my own life, one all-important day that helped to forge my imagination was my eighth birthday, when my mother woke me up early and said: ‘Now you are ready!’ I opened my birthday present and there was a girl scout uniform and all the equipment. From that moment on, I spent most of my childhood walking in the woods and sharing the path with other children, seeking a God in falling stars – a God who could answer the big questions of a little life. At age twenty I put away my scout upbringing with all my other keepsakes and launched into the study of anthropology. Today I’m a rather reserved person who occasionally makes rash decisions, following my instinct, small signs of fate, or whatever else there may be. Thanks to one of these sudden inspirations, in fact, I embarked on this project and devoted all my efforts to an experiment: making a film about the concept of the sacred.». [Irene Dorigotti]

Irene Dorigotti is a visual anthropologist with a degree in cultural anthropology and ethnology from the University of Bologna and another from the University of Turin, Department of Political Science and the Society of Culture. Her interests are film and story writing. Her fields of research include sensory perception, time, spirituality, urban anthropology, imagery and experimental methods, radical aesthetics, and the practice of ethnography. Her previous films, among others, are Apnea (2019), Herz‐Jesu‐Feuer (2021); Ora sono diventata foresta (2021), which competed at Filmmaker in the Prospettive section; and Le Grand Reve (2022) selected for the Trento Film Festival.