Ivan I. Tverdovskiy’s Conference, Baltic Event Co-Production Market 2019 project, screens in the Giornate Degli Autori competition, an independent sidebar Venice Film Festival!

The Conference is the fourth feature of Russian director Ivan I. Tverdovskiy. Previous films of the 31-year old director have been the festival hits Corrections Class, Zoologia, and Jumpman.

According to the website of Giornate degli Autori the line up for this year’s takes us through an amazing journey through space and time. It starts in rural China in the 1990s (Mama, a sober and remarkably mature debut by Chinese filmmaker Li Dongmei), leaps to Palestine (200 Meters, an Italian-Palestinian co-production directed by Ameen Nayfeh and starring Ali Suliman, one of the top Arab actors today), then arrives to Eastern Europe.

Giornate’s lineup takes you from Russia’s Far North, a Siberia ambivalent about the consumer culture (The Whaler Boy by newcomer Philipp Yurye and co-produced by the late Marion Hänsel), then to Moscow, with its political secrets and moral dilemmas (Conference) and on to Hungary and impossible love affairs (Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, by Lili Horvát) and to Serbia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina – all in the same film – Oasis by Serbian filmmaker Ivan Ikić.

Italy is obviously on the itinerary: specifically Puglia, with ***Stonebreaker ***by the De Serio brothers. France and Algerian roots appear in Honey Cigar (debut by Kamir Aïnouz). Giornate also crosses the Atlantic and washes up in Canada (Saint-Narcisse by Bruce LaBruce) and the United States (Residue, a stirring debut by Merawi Gerima). Lastly, Giornate drops down to Santiago de Chile, setting off a queer love story at the time of the Pinochet regime (Tengo miedo torero by Rodrigo Sepúlveda).

Giornate degli Autori was born in 2004, as an independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival. The aim of the event is to draw attention to high-quality cinema, without any kind of restriction, with special care for innovation, research, originality and independence. These are all features of the 12 films selected as well as being reflected in the special events held during the Days in the Villa degli Autori.