La scomparsa di mia madre by Beniamino Barrese is the winner of the Tasca d’Oro, prize to the best documentary in competition at SalinaDocFest. Chosen by the jury composed by Claudio Giovannesi, Nicolas Philibert and Francesco Zizola. It is also the work considered worthy of the Special Mention WIF – Women in Film, attributed by the jury composed by Kissy Dugan, President of WIF, the actress Valentina Carnelutti and the director Antonietta De lillo.
The Signum Audience Award went to Freedom Fields by Anglo-Libyan director Naziha Arebi.
Here is the motivation of the jury of the Tasca d’Oro:
“Truffaut said that films breathe because of their flaws. The film we decided to reward is a fine example, and it has deeply touched us. It is a film that asks questions about images and questions about identity and memory.
This edition of the SDF is dedicated to the theme of resistance, and we think– explain the jurors– that cinema should resist the world in which we live where everything must be visible. Cinema should show and hide in order to build our gaze.
We decided unanimously to give the prize to La scomparsa di mia madre by Beniamino Barrese, who wonders about the image of women in our society and who invites us to witness a double conflict: the one between the filmmaker and the protagonist of the story (his mother), and at the same time the ambiguity of a woman who wants to be filmed and at the same time wants to deny access to her image”.
This is the motivation of the Special Mention WIF – Women in Film:
“A film that is a hand-to-hand between mother and son, between author and subject, that strip themselves in a generous and refined act of love. It is a vital confrontation, which portrays the portrait of a woman who is not ideological but instinctively emancipated, who fights conventions by renewing the extreme and painful attempt to escape the prevailing ambiguity.
A woman, and mother, who does not give discounts either to herself or to reality, like the author, her son, who confirms with her that beauty is not in the aesthetic value but in the ethical principle.
In a battle between the will to give themselves and the need to separate, the protagonists build an intimate and urgent dialogue on the overwhelming of the image on memory, and on life itself, in a film whose form, rich in unusual and surprising narrative gimmicks, coincides effectively and courageously with its deepest content”.
