What world, what times are we living in?
An indecipherable world, an undefined time; filled with uncertainty and unknowns, in which it has become difficult to find our compass and distinguish truth from falsehood, reality from fiction. We are inside an indeterminate present, where the risk – more and more real every day – is we are losing the ability to interpret our reality, almost as if our reference points – the codes by which we used to recognise and define ourselves according to a common language – have become suddenly inadequate, fallacious, contradictory. In such a scenario, one step away from the precipice, in a world overflowing with weapons and ravaged by wars, with environmental and social imperatives that require an immediate and radical change of pace if catastrophe is to be averted, what answers can cinema offer? Not answers; doubts, if anything. Despite it all, we cannot avert our eyes from the images of the present; we still rely on them in our frantic search for paradigms – far from generating certainties, they question us, challenge us, amidst calls for greater awareness of our responsibilities, in a world where everything is up for dispute. Everything, even the very images we can see with our eyes.

Today’s cinema appears to be susceptible to this disorientation, to the feeling of suspended time, of waiting. The shortlist of films that make up the programme of the 39. edition of the Venice Settimana Internazionale della Critica is the result of a fecund and stimulating dialogue with the selection committee, composed of Enrico Azzano, Chiara Borroni, Ilaria Feole, and Federico Pedroni. They have been working alongside me for three years now, on our quest to chart the most solid routes of contemporary cinema. The films shortlisted, then, are travelling in the same direction, substantiating the bewilderment that we as humans share at every latitude of the planet. A selection with strong chiaroscuro overtones, that conveys a sense of general instability and tackles a range of subjects – in their composite variety, they communicate with each other according to the laws of attraction, coalescing to generate a broader discourse, more dynamic and pluralistic.

2024 is a year of record numbers at SIC. As usual, we have welcomed 7+2 films – chosen among the almost 700 titles submitted from every continent – where the depiction of the world is declined through the codes of both genre and arthouse cinema in a realistic, documentary, sometimes ironic style, or – often metaphorically – through the filter of magic realism.

New challenges await us, both in terms of the real world and the narratives we are presenting. While we observe – without prejudice, but not heedlessly either – the new frontiers of the cinematic image, even AI generated ones, here in their first convincing application (and regardless of the inescapable premise that ethical and legislative principles will have to govern its usage), we are confronted with a schizophrenic present, electrifying in its own way. A present time, then, not necessarily destructive, but ripe with potential for regeneration, for rehabilitation. Regardless, it is an opportunity to rethink the history and the future of cinema.

It would be paradoxical, and beautiful if, at the very gates of Hell, when every paradigm has been shattered and everything points to the end times, we should instead transform the perfect storm into a new beginning. Into rebirth. So that we can rebuild. Through images, of course, as well.

Beatrice Fiorentino
Artistic Director Settimana Internazionale della Critica