Ritual - A Psychomagic Story (first feature)

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Ritual - A Psychomagic Story (Ritual)

Ritual - A Psychomagic Story (Ritual)

original title:

Ritual

cast:

Désirée Giorgetti, Ivan Franek, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Anna Bonasso, Patrizia Laquidara, Roberta Sparta, Fabio Gemo, Roberto Poli, Mariuccia Nichele, Vito Vittorio Faggionato

cinematography:

country:

Italy

year:

2012

format:

colour

release date:

08/05/2014

festivals & awards:

Ritual is a shocking story. This film seeks to explore the territory of maternity, psychomagic, madness, superstition and popular beliefs. The fragile Lia (Désirée Giorgetti) and the sadist Viktor (Ivan Franek) have a very strong and passionate relationship but when she gets pregnant and he forces her to interrupt the pregnancy, their relationship breaks apart and Lia falls into a deep depression. After an attempted suicide she decides to leave Viktor and, in the last desperate effort to cure herself, she goes to visit her old aunt Agata (Anna Bonasso) in her creepy 18th century villa in Mason, a small village of the Veneto countryside in Italy.
Mason is a place full of magic, popular beliefs, traditional culture, myths and legends. Lia’s aunt is familiar with all these rituals and she is the healer of the village. The old aunt had always been passionate about psychomagic* and popular medicine. Agata has learned these methods of healing from Fernando (Alejandro Jodorowsky), her dead Chilean husband. She wants to try to cure her niece with a psychomagic act. Lia, when she was a child, used to spend every summer in that place. It seems Lia feels better returning in Mason but the serenity doesn't last long: the first night at the villa she sees the Anguana (Patrizia Laquidara), a magical creature from the popular legends of Veneto. She meets also two strange children that they come often to visit her singing old popular rhymes.
After some weeks Viktor arrives in Mason. Lia agrees he can stays there with her. Viktor is unaware of the curative methods of the aunt and, being completely skeptical, when he discovers what kind of medicine the aunt apply he considers Agata a charlatan.
Taking advantage of Viktor’s absence due to an argument with Lia, the two women hurry to perform the rite in order to liberate the unconscious mind of Lia from her sense of guilt but Viktor comes back and tries in every way to stop the psychomagic act.