20 Aug VAKHIM by Francesca Pirani
Venetian Nights 2024
VAKHIM
by Francesca PiraniItaly, 2024, 98′, colourScreenplay: Francesca Pirani 06 SEPTEMBER 13:15 – Sala LagunaV.O. sub ENPress, Industry06 SEPTEMBER 21:00 – Sala LagunaV.O. sub ITFollowed by QAReservation required on giornatedegliautori.com
Adopted in Cambodia when he was four years old, Vakhim came to Italy in 2008. He only spoke Khmer and everything he saw was unfamiliar, but he was a cheerful child and to fit in, he put any traces of his short first life out of mind, though not entirely. His older sister, Maklin, is in Italy, too, and a few years later a letter arrives: Vakhim’s birth mother is asking after him. Francesca and Simone, his adoptive parents, decide to go look for her.
“[…] The reconstructions of Vakhim and Maklin’s memories from Cambodia are more film-like, while the depiction of their journey is rendered in a totally realistic style, as is the narrative of the atmosphere on the film set itself: the siblings’ moods, the news of their biological mother and the first contacts with her, up to the emotional encounter with the woman herself. These two different narrative planes constantly shift from fiction to reality and from the past in Cambodia to the present in Italy, lending truth to the images on the screen but also different layers of interpretation. The aim is not linear storytelling, but a narrative that adapts to the flexibility of one’s inner world, in which time expands and shrinks and expands again, ceaselessly reshuffling sensations, memories, and unexpected associations in order to recreate an image of that invisible reality, alternately preserved in the child’s memory, then his memory as an adult.” (Francesca Pirani)
Francesca Pirani holds a degree in film criticism and the history of film from the l’Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”. She continued her studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica “Silvio D’Amico”. On the film front, she got her start as an AD for Marco Bellocchio on La visione del sabba (1988), which she also co-wrote, and on his The Butterfly’s Dream, Pirani made her feature directorial debut with (1994).
Nel 1997 ha esordito nel lungometraggio con L’appartamento the first installment in a projected series of four films entitledUn altro paese nei miei occhiabout immigration to Italy. Five years later, she directed the film Una bellezza che non lascia scampo.
Nel 2017 ha co-diretto il documentario In 2017, she co-directed the documentary BEO with Stefano Viali. More recently, she teamed up with Viali again to co-direct D’Annunzio. (2022).
Per la televisione, invece, ha realizzato numerosi documentari insieme a Carlo Lizzani.