The birthday party

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The birthday party (Il compleanno di Enrico)

The birthday party (Il compleanno di Enrico)

original title:

Il compleanno di Enrico

directed by:

cast:

Nicola Cannarella, Matthias Tormen, Denis Fasolo, Elia Luciani, Livio Pacella, Luisa Trigilla

screenplay:

cinematography:

Giulia Schelhas

set design:

Paula Meuthen

costume design:

Ilaria Marmugi

music:

Non voglio che Clara

country:

Germany/France/Italy

year:

2023

film run:

17'16"

format:

DCP - colour

status:

Ready (18/04/2023)

festivals & awards:

December 1999. I remember that, amidst the Millenium Bug anxiety, I went to the birthday of Enrico, a kid who lived with his family in an old and isolated farmhouse.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
"Il compleanno di Enrico" is a film about memory and how we remember things. The events in the film are autobiographical and I tried to film them faithfully. However, I realized that the only way to do this was to stage those particular distortions typical of memories: the accentuation of seemingly unimportant details, the landscapes and places filtered through emotion, a certain perturbing atmosphere that is not subject to the laws of logic. It is a film about being a child, about fascination at other people's homes, about strict fathers and alcoholic fathers, about grandmothers who disappear into the woods and mothers who have to scream to be heard.
Shooting this film was for me like finding an old elementary school notebook or reading a postcard from a bygone era, caught in a moment of transition: the last days of the millennium, between the end of the war in Yugoslavia and the beginning of a world of terror and uncertainty symbolized, in the story, by the Millennium Bug. To tell the story, I chose to point the camera, once again, at the landscape of my native country, a place at once familiar to me and charged with horror.