PALERMO -- The nineteenth edition for the Sole Luna Doc film festival, was taking place in Palermo this week in the open spaces of the GAM/Modern Art Gallery. 

  The international documentary film festival scheduled from the 1st to the 7th of July could be found at the Sant'Anna Cloister and Bonet Courtyard, and in the Sala dei 99, inside Palazzo Branciforte, seat of the Fondazione Sicilia. 

  A rich week of screenings and meetings, preceded by a festival preview at the Rouge et Noir cinema (26 June at 8.30 pm) of the film Los océanos son los verdaderos continentes by Tommaso Santambrogio (Italy, Cuba, 2023, 119', b/w), among the emerging Italian authors of the moment. The film was applauded at the opening of the Venice Film Festival's Venice Days 2023, combining documentary and fiction in an original way. Santambrogio is also a guest at the festival on July 3rd to present the out of competition feature film Taxibol. 

  The festival had 50 titles this year including competing and non-competing films (10 national premieres and 3 world premieres) selected by artistic directors Chiara Andrich and Andrea Mura. There was a thematic red thread that was running through the entire programme: the phenomenon of migration and its implications; post-Covid adolescents portrayed in opposite ends of the world; and the urgency of a radical ecological policy to protect natural resources. 

  Eighteen films in the competition were judged by the international jury (8 features and 10 shorts) and special juries (schools for feature films and new citizenships for shorts), characterised by great variety, both thematically and stylistically. In addition to the titles selected for the international competition were the productions - 3 long and 3 short - of the new Oikos competitive section reserved for films dealing with environmental issues and which were awarded by Enel Green Power, the Festival's main-sponsor for several years now. 

  The main themes of the 2024 edition were emerging from the very first day: Don Benjamin by Iván Zahinos (Spain 2024, 29') was telling the non-violent political action of Benjamin and a group of natives to protect the Bolivian forest from fires (1 July, 9 pm, Gam/Chiostro Sant'Anna). Luca Ciriello's Api (Italy 2023, 20') and Karima Ashadu's Machine Boys (Nigeria-Germany-Italy, 8') portrayed young adolescents in Val d'Aosta and Nigeria amidst bee cars and bombastic motorbikes (in the Bonet courtyard from 9.30 pm). While Those next to us by Bernhard Hetzenauer (Austria-Germany-Mexico-Switzerland 2023, 30') was the touching reconstruction of a migration tragedy at the border with Mexico, through the story of the only survivor among the migrants hiding in the gap of a van. Río Rojo by Guillermo Quintero (France-Colombia 2023, 70'), in competition in the Oikos section, closed the evening's screenings with a documentary film on the pollution of the Rio Tinto in Spain. 

  Two special events combining documentary cinema language and other artistic languages were inaugurated the 19th edition on Monday 1st of July: at 7 p.m., the inauguration of the exhibition Upwards/Downwards. The Andromeda Theatre by Lorenzo Reina. An exhibition curated by Alessio Bortot, Agostino De Rosa and Imago rerum, and produced by the association Sole Luna - Un ponte tra le culture with the support of the Municipality of Palermo. It combined large-format photos and documentary projections with digital models, as result of very recent studies carried out by the IUAV University of Venice and the University of Trieste on the Andromeda Theatre in Santo Stefano Quisquina, on the Sicani Mountains. The work of the artist-pastor Lorenzo Reina was among the most fascinating on the international land art scene, sort of starship in continuous evolution.

  The other special event was Il secolo è mobile (The century is mobile), an evocative and innovative multimedia monologue that combined the audiovisual universe with that of theatre, written and directed by Gabriele Del Grande (a Zalab production), which was telling the story of migrations in Europe as seen from the future and which was presented as a regional preview at the 19th SLD film festival at 9.30 p.m. on Monday at the Sant'Anna cloister.

  The theme of migration was the trait d'union of several films in competition representing four continents (Europe, Africa, Asia, America). Among others: 2G by Karim Sayad, in its national premiere, took viewers to Niger and shows the fate of four traffickers. After being banned from illegally transporting migrants, they set off across the Sahara to join dozens of desperate gold diggers. Anita, lost in the news by Iranian director Behzad Nalbandi, another premiere in the short film competition (scheduled for 6 July, 10.30 pm), is an animated film inspired by a tragedy in the English Channel that occurred in 2020. And again Jaima by Francesco Pereira (Switzerland 2023, 18') takes us among the Saharawi, internal refugees who have been "forgotten" for over 40 years in Algeria.

  For the Sguardi doc Italia section, focusing on emerging Italian productions and directors, Adriano Valerio with the film Casablanca (France-Italy 2023, 63'), Francesco Montagner with Asterion (Czech Republic-Slovakia 2022, 14') and Andrea de Fusco presenting Night song of a wandering cowboy, a short film made entirely with artificial intelligence, were also guests at the festival. The aforementioned Tommaso Santambrogio was attending with Taxibol, in which the director Lav Diaz travels to Cuba in search of a mysterious former general who has escaped from the Philippines. This same section was also hosting a number of short films made by participants in the Itineranze Doc 2024 workshop, the project for training and accompanying young directors in collaboration with some of the most important Italian documentary festivals.

  New in this edition was the Excursions section dedicated to a number of films either marked by an anthropological sensibility, or inspired by adventure documentaries and mockumentaries. With documentaries telling never-before-seen stories such as Kim's video by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon (USA 2023, 87') in which director David Redmon from New York arrives in Salemi in search of the vhs collection of the iconic Kim's Video rental shop (Tuesday 2 July at 10.30 pm, Gam/Cortile Bonet). Also premiering is Morire a Palermo by Caterina Pasqualino (Italy 2024, 66') revolving around the sad story of Palermitans awaiting burial at the Rotoli cemetery (Thursday 4 July 8.00 pm, Branciforte/Sala dei 99). The programme is completed by Abbay, the descent of the Blue Nile, a documentary-reportage by Lorenzo Bojola on the first, unknown Italian mission on the Blue Nile in the 1970s, through archive material made known 50 years later (Friday 5 July, 8 pm, Branciforte/Sala dei 99).

  The Sicilia doc section, reserved for films by students of the Centro sperimentale di Cinematografia - sede Sicilia, was featuring five titles investigating the theme of personal identity and territories. The section, out of competition, was combined with the Cinematographe.it Award. The jury composed of the editors of the online magazine will choose the best film of this year, accompanying it with communication activities during the distribution phase. The titles: Che ore sono by Marta Basso and Tito Puglielli about three lives that intertwine in a psychiatric community in Palermo (Wednesday 3 July at 8pm, Branciforte/Sala dei 99); Julia by Bernadette Vespaziani Reginato, the story of a young woman between everyday life and theatrical aspirations (Friday 5 July at 9pm, Gam/Cortile Bonet); Parabole d'oro, a collective and archival film on the industrial dream in Sicily and what remains of it (Tuesday 2 July, 7.30 pm, Branciforte/Sala dei 99); and La ricomparsa delle lucciole by Cristiano Giamporcaro, a journey into the identity of the island's inland areas between past and future (Thursday 4 July, 9 pm, Gam/Cortile Bonet). 

  This year, the festival has chosen to pay tribute to Danilo Dolci and his 'non-violent revolution', on the centenary of the birth of the Italian sociologist and educator, with a talk and the screening of Dio delle zecche(Italy, 2015) by Leandro Picarella and Giovanni Rosa. For the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the remains of Santa Rosalia, the SLD film festival was also pulling out of its archives The Virgin of Palermo(Germany, 2005) by Antonio Guidi, awarded Best Director in the 2008 edition of the festival. Also dedicated to the Santuzza was the world premiere presentation of Santa Rosalia (Italy 2024) by anthropologist Eugenio Giorgianni, a film on the cult of the saint that has welcomed new devotions and new citizenships (Tuesday 2 July, 9 pm, Gam/Cortile Bonet), produced as part of a research project of major national interest by the Universities of Palermo, Catania, Basilicata and Messina. The outcomes of the Migrazioni, spaesamentoMigrazioni, spaesamento e appaesamento: letture antropologiche del nesso rituali / migrazioni in contesti di Italia meridionale project will also be presented and discussed at the Festival during a talk involving the four universities (Tuesday 2 July, 5 pm, Gam/Cortile Bonet).

  In the Creare Legami section, cinema was becoming the language of  community and SLD film festival will be the stage for the presentation of participatory projects with talks and screenings, including the first public screening of the three winning films of the national competition "Menti in Corto", conceived and promoted by the Assisted Therapeutic Community "Sentiero per la Vita" of Calatafimi- Segesta (Wednesday 3 July, 6 pm, Branciforte/Sala dei 99). Also part of this section are the participatory films produced by the associationZabbara - Boza or die by Alessio Genovese (Italy 2023, 15') on the difficult migration from Libya - and by the association La Bandita - Fare Paese by Danny Biancardi, Silvia Miola and Marta Violante (Italy 2024, 45'), a photograph of the Southern Apennines between departures and returns. Both will be screened at Palazzo Branciforte on Friday July 5th starting at 6 pm. 

  For the first time in this section, there is the product of a collaboration between SLD film festival and the Academy of Fine Arts of Palermo: an animation video directed by the students of the Digital Video course coordinated by Professor Filippo Pierpaolo Marino that was focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through films from the Festival archive. 

  SLD film festival was produced by the association Sole Luna - Un ponte tra le culture (Sun Moon - A bridge between cultures), set up with the precise intention of initiating processes of friendship and interchange between peoples, mainly addressing its activities to the younger generations. Joining the artistic directors on the board are the festival president and founder Lucia Gotti Venturato and the scientific director Gabriella D'Agostino, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Palermo. 

lw