Here is the calendar for the 21st edition of Magma:

7-11 Nov h 21 | MYmovies.it | Magma Debut

14 Nov h 21 | Palazzo del Turismo, Acireale | Opening with wine tasting organised by Ais – Associazione Italiana Sommelier (by invitation only)

15 Nov h 15 | Accademia Belle Arti di Catania | Eksperimenta, video art and experimental short films section

16 Nov h 20.30 | Isola, Catania | Insula – Impressions of Sicily, section of regional short films

17 Nov h 20.30 | Margherita Multisala, Acireale | International Short Film Competition + winning film Magma Debut

Films in the international competition are:
Datsun, Mark Albiston, NZ, 2021, 15’
In quanto a noi, Simone Massi, IT, 2022, 5’
Cai – Ber, Ahmed Abdelsalam, EG, 2021, 17’

18 Nov h 20.30 | Margherita Multisala, Acireale | International Short Film Competition

Films in the international competition are:
The Chick, Bijan Aarabi, IR, 2020, 13’
Graveyard, Santiago Lascano Santa Cruz, ES, 2022, 6’
Camerieri, Adriano Giotti, IT, 2021, 9’
Cemento y acero, Oriol Villar, ES, 2022, 17’
Nique le privé, Raphaël Daniel, FR, 2022, 15’
Too Rough, Sean Lionadh, UK, 2022, 16’
Loop, Pablo Polledri, ES/AR, 2021, 8’
Malas noticias, Pablo Manchado Cascón & Santiago Cardelús Ruiz-Alberdi, ES, 2021, 15’
Sound of the Night, Chanrado Sok & Kongkea Vann, KH, 2021, 20’
Til We meet Again, Ülo Pikkov, EE, 2022, 14’

18 Nov h 23.00 | Sketch, via Romeo Acireale | After the Festival

19 Nov h 20.30 | Margherita Multisala, Acireale | International Short Film Competition + Award ceremony for the winners

Films in the international competition are:
Corpo e Aria, Cristian Patanè, IT, 2021, 15’
Oh So Convenient, Red, Hung Huei Jen, EE/TW, 2022, 4’
Bulldozer, Mads Koudal, DK, 2022, 13’
36, Ana Lambarri Tellaeche, ES, 2022, 20’
La Meute, L. Cottin-Euziol, L. Abdou, A. Blossier Gacic, C. Hedreville, A. Moulin, V. Normand, G. Saint-Frison, FR, 2021, 6’
Reach the vortex, Pedro Poveda, ES, 2021, 5’
Free Fall, Emmanuel Tenenbaum, FR, 2021, 20’
Big, Daniele Pini, IT, 2021, 14’
Katvoman, Hadi Sheibani, IR/IN, 2022, 7’
Granny’s Sexual Life, Urška Djukić & Émilie Pigeard, FR/SI, 2021, 13’
Talponi, Vanja Victor Kabir Tognola, CH, 2021, 15’

19 Nov h 23.00 | Sketch, via Romeo Acireale | Final Party

– INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION – 

Marco Segato –president of the Jury 

Graduated in Literature at the University of Padua with a thesis on Martin Scorsese, he attended the Master of Documentary at Scuola Civica di Cinema in Milan. In 2007 he was assistant director on Carlo Mazzacurati’s film La giusta distanza. In 2007 he made the documentary Ci resta il nome with Mario Rigoni Stern, Andrea Zanzotto, Marco Paolini and Daniel Libeskind and in 2008 he directed the documentary Via Anelli. In the same year, he directed Marco Paolini’s video, Il sergente, and in 2009 he was the director of Pensavo fosse Bach, a concert-performance by Mario Brunello. In 2011 he made the documentary film Ora si ferma il vento and in 2012 L’uomo che amava il cinema, presented at Giornate degli autori – 69. Venice Film Festival. He collaborates with the IUAV University of Venice and is the artistic director of Euganea Film Festival and Detour, a travel film festival. In 2016, he directed La pelle dell’Orso, for which he obtained a nomination at the 2017 David di Donatello Awards as Best Debut Director, and at the Golden Globe in the Best First Feature and Best Cinematography categories. In 2021 he directed the TV programme La Fabbrica del Mondo, broadcast on Rai 3. Since 2020 he has also been collaborating with Andrea Pennacchi on the creation of videos for the La7 TV programme Propaganda Live.

Thony – Juror

Born in Palermo to an Italian father and a Polish mother, Federica Victoria Caiozzo graduated from the IED as a sound designer and writes her songs under the stage name Thony. In 2012, she released her solo album With the green in my mouth and, while looking for a label to support her with the distribution, the production company Motorino Amaranto entrusted her with the female lead role in Paolo Virzì’s film Tutti i santi giorni, for which she won the FICE Award as Best Debut Actress and was nominated for David di Donatello, Nastri d’Argento and Globi d’oro. 

Since then, her career as a musician, singer and soundtrack composer has been sided by that of TV actress for the series Tutto può succedere (2015, 2016, 2017 – Rai1) and Summertime (2020, 2021, 2022 – Netflix) and on film in Nessuno siamo perfetti (2014) by Giancarlo Soldi and Ho ucciso Napoleone (2015) by Giorgia Farina. In 2019 she stars in Gianfrancesco Lazotti’s La notte è piccola per noi, in Duccio Chiarini’s L’ospite and in Daniele Luchetti’s Momenti di trascurabile felicità – with which she was nominated for Nastri d’argento as Best Actress in a Leading Role. 2021 is the year of Una relazione by Stefano Sardo and Settembre, Giulia Louise Steigerwalt’s debut feature. She has recently appeared in Primadonna (2022) by Marta Savina, presented at the 2022 Rome Film Festival. 

Riccardo Costantini – Juror

A cultural operator, he works at Cinemazero, where he is responsible for events and archives. He directs the ‘Pordenone Docs Fest – Le voci del documentario’ festival. He is president of the distribution company Tucker Film. He has taught Audiovisual Didactics at the Faculty of Education of the University of Trieste and edited several monographic publications on cinema and photography (Fellini, Bergman, Losey, Moretti, Pasolini…) and essays in collective volumes. He has held conferences in Italy and abroad on audiovisual issues. Curator of photographic exhibitions in Italy and abroad (Pasolini, Tina Modotti, Tarkovsky…) and their catalogues, coordinator of film restoration projects (Welles, Bachmann, Giraldi…), he is also a lecturer in film disciplines for various institutions..

– MAGMA DEBUT- 

Sanjeewa Pushpakumara – President of the Jury

Sri Lankan film director, writer, and producer, he graduated in filmmaking from Sri Lanka’s National Film Corporation. His first feature film Flying Fish (2011) world premiered at the International Rotterdam Film Festival and was nominated for the Festival’s Tiger Award.In 2012, Pushpakumara was invited by the Cinéfondation of Cannes Film Festival to its Résidence programme in Paris to develop his second feature film, Burning Birds (2016). In 2018, the film project Amma won Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors main prize. His last film, The Peacock Lament (2022, a co-production between Sri Lanka and Italy) was just presented as a part of Competition at the 35th Tokyo International Film Festival.

Stefania Rimini 

Stefania Rimini is associate professor of Performing Arts at the University of Catania, where she teaches History and Criticism of Cinema, Contemporary Film Cultures, Dramaturgy, and Models of TV Seriality. Her main research interests concern the relationship between cinema, theatre and new media, acting, queer and gender studies. She is part of the scientific committee of CRAD – Centro ricerche su attore e divismo di Torino (Research centre of actors and stardom of Turin). 

Beppe Leonetti

Graduated in Film Editing from Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, he collaborated with Nanni Moretti by editing some of his documentaries (Il diario del caimano, L’ultimo campionato) and some of his short films. In 2011 he edited La-bàs. Educazione criminale by Guido Lombardi, winner of the Lion of the Future at the 68th Venice Film Festival. In 2012, together with the De Serio twins and Carlo Cagnasso, he founded Il Piccolo Cinema in Turin, an experiment to bring cinema to the city’s deprived suburbs. His most recent film collaborations include: Tutte le anime del mio corpo by Erika Rossi, EXPRMNTL by Brecht Debackere, Babylon Sisters by Gigi Roccati, Stories from the Chestnut Woods by Gregor Božič, Don’t Forget to Breathe by Martin Turk.

LORENZO VECCHIO AWARD
The Lorenzo Vecchio Award is named after the creator of Magma, who passed at the young age of twenty-three, after directing the first three festival editions. The main festival award – which comes with a cash prize and an ornamental plate especially designed for Magma by Ceramiche De Simone .

AUDIENCE AWARD
The festival-goers will be able to rate each film through online voting forms made available at the start of each festival night to let them have a say in the choice of the international competition winner.

SPECIAL MENTIONS
The Magma Jury will also give some special mentions to those short films in competition standing out in artistic and technical qualities.

INSULA AWARD
Now in its fourth edition, the Insula Prize will be awarded to the best Sicilian short film chosen by the audience on Wednesday 16 November by Isola Catania.

EKSPERIMENTA AWARD
At its first edition, the best short film in the experimental and video art section will be awarded on Tuesday 15 November at the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania.

Ahead of the festival’s international competition is, as usual, Insula – Impressions of Sicily, the section devoted to short films by Sicilian directors or set in Sicily. This year, the appointment is set for Wednesday 16 November at Isola, the coworking and innovation hub located in Palazzo Biscari, a pearl of Etna’s Baroque in the historic centre of Catania. Isola and Magma are in fact united by the desire to tell the story of their territory and promote their excellence outside the regional borders.

The six short films in the programme will be presented by directors and technical cast members. Before the screening, it will be possible to taste a glass of wine from Cantine La Contea in the presence of an AIS sommelier.

The selected films are:

Caccia al lupo | Giovanni La Pàrola | IT, 2022, 15′
Lollo is a shepherd. One stormy night he returns home with a lamb on his shoulder, suspicious of his wife Alina’s affair with the young Bellamà. His lover, hiding in the storeroom of the house, overhears Lollo’s ambiguous discussion with his wife about hunting a wolf that threatens his flock.

Code Red | Luke Renard | IT, 2022, 4′
A car chase near a sleepy Sicilian village.

Nurradin | Daniele Trovato | IT, 2021, 15′
Between the mountains and the sea, between baroque and social housing, two boys, belonging to opposite worlds, fall in love. A naive love that will have to come to terms with the reality of a city full of prejudice, fascinating but cruel.

FortyFiveFifteenTwentyFour | Emma Cecala | IT, 2021, 11′
The Mantrillo family goes to the cemetery to look for the tomb of their uncle Titta, who died years earlier, to get the winning numbers of the Lotto draw from the deceased. The search will not bring the desired results, at least for the family of the deceased…

Memories of Today | Dario Ciulla | IT, 2022, 20′
Giorgio Fortis, an old glory of 1960s pop music, retires from the stage because he is against singing a song with socio-political contents. Forty-six years later, he is convinced by his manager and former partner Brenda Fineschi to participate in the song festival Ricordi di Oggi.

Only in the cinema | Marco Pirrello | IT, 2021, 29′
Alberto manages the King, the oldest cinema among those still in activity and the last art-house cinema in town. Before him his grandfather and father did the same. The shutters have never been down for so long, as they are now, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the harsh lockdown. Nevertheless, Alberto cannot stay away from his beloved cinema.

The use of cinema amongst young people is a matter of the utmost importance for their cultural and personal growth: cinema can stimulate their imagination and curiosity, and it’s an extraordinary form of communication through which to convey important values ​​for the ongoing learning process of young students.

Magma Youth is the section of the festival addressing young audiences: on Friday 18 November at Margherita Multisala in Acireale, there will be a special screening of films specifically selected for students, featuring the presence of some directors with whom short debates will be held with simultaneous translation into Italian. Students attending the screenings will be asked to write a review of one of the short films seen during the morning and the best review will be awarded a special prize. In addition, at the same time as the screenings, a competition will be launched exclusively for students from schools in Acireale for the production of short films on the themes of diversity and environmental sustainability. The competition is scheduled to close in April 2023. The winning reviews and films will be awarded at a special event in May 2023.