Sante Saints
Directed by Valeria GaudieriItaly 2025
Runtime 19'
Bianca is 12 years old when she is chosen to play the angel — a symbol of purity and grace — at her town fair. As she prepares for the moment when she will be lifted off the ground, her encounter with Ginevra fractures the surface of childhood and opens a crack from which a new and unsettling desire seeps in. In a suspended time and place, the film covers the imperceptible yet radical transition between imposed purity and awareness of one’s own body, between childhood and adulthood. A female coming-of-age tale that investigates — through its hagiographic and apocryphal aesthetic — the symbolic construct of grace and the inherited weight of guilt.
Directed by
Valeria Gaudieri
Screenplay
Valeria Gaudieri, Enrico M. Minto, Jonas Davì Moruzzi, Enrica Polemio
Cinematography
Giorgio Chiucchiù
Editing
Francesco Ferraris
Music
Lorenzo Barcella
Sound Design
Tommaso Libero Di Lorenzo
Production Design
Camilla De Angelis
Costumes
Rita Guardabascio
Cast
Greta Santi, Beatrice Bartoni, Rosa Vannucci
Production
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia
Italian Distributor
Premiere Film
Sunday 31.08
8.30am Hall Perla
Press, Industry
Monday 01.09
2.00pm Hall Perla
Public, All accreditations
Tuesday 02.09
7.15pm Hall Corinto
Public, All accreditations
Valeria Gaudieri (1995) was born in Naples. After studying Philosophy, she began working as an assistant operator. In 2020, she earned a Master’s Degree in Cinematography at Goldsmiths University of London, under the artistic direction of Steve McQueen. In 2021, she was admitted to the Filmmaking course at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, where she shot No Place Like Home (Giffoni 2025) and her graduation short film Sante. Her work stems from a mnemonic impulse to investigate the feminine by exploring the narrative potential of gender, abstraction, and folklore, as keys to access both a personal and collective memory.