Short film in competition

Sante Saints

Directed by Valeria Gaudieri
Italy 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

SIC@SIC 2025 Valeria Gaudieri

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.