DocuDonna is an international film festival dedicated to documentaries directed by women. This year too, the goal is to offer a unique artistic space to many talented directors, focusing on creative catharsis as introspection and personal growth.
R-Esistenza is understood as the effort to resist emotional discouragement in this particularly dehumanizing historical period, where human beings are called to focus on what remains Beautiful, Good, and Just, with the courage of Love in the Heart.
It is Palestinian director Annie Sakkab’s documentary The Poem We Sang that opens the seventh edition of the international DocuDonna festival. This film reflects on themes of love and nostalgia, feelings explored through overcoming the trauma of losing the family home and of forced migration.
Following this is The Silent Protest: 1929 Jerusalem by Mahasen Nasser El-Din, which recounts October 26, 1929, when Palestinian women launched a feminist movement in Jerusalem. Around 300 women came to the city from all over Palestine.
Next is Vibration from Gaza by Rehab Nazzal, telling the story of three deaf children — Amani, Musa, and Israa — born and raised in Gaza, who narrate their vivid, daily perception of war: the flames of missiles.
The first day concludes with Amor by Virginia Eleuteri Serpieri, the story of a woman, Teresa, who reached the Tiber River and surrendered herself to its current.
The second day begins with two shorts by young Italian directors: All’Alba by Ilaria Lombardi, where the protagonists, Giacomo and Alfonso, describe themselves as “the last fishermen of Bacoli,” a small town north of Naples; followed by Bobby by Erica De Lisio, where her grandparents’ dog leads us on a journey through memories, ruins, and hills, a silent guardian of a world resisting the passage of time.
With the feature film Finis Terrae by Marzia Rumi, we return to the sea, at the edges of the world where there is an ancient and wild island, a primordial place where time seems to have stood still. Alicudi, the outermost of the Aeolian Islands, lives far from the chaos and relentless rhythm of modern life.
The atmosphere changes completely with Women for Iran by Sara Hourngir, which tells of the civil war that has been ongoing for several years in Iran, brought under the spotlight of Western media only from September 2022, after the arrest and death of Mahsa Amini.
Closing the seventh edition is The Eternal Song by Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo, which takes us across sacred lands where the voices of Indigenous peoples reveal both the deep wounds of colonization and the ancestral wisdom that guides us toward healing.
Cristina Berlini
Artistic Director, DocuDonna
AWARDS
BEST INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY
The Eternal Song
Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo
BEST ITALIAN DOCUMENTARY
Amor
Virginia Eleuteri Serpieri
SPECIAL MENTION
Vibrations From Gaza
Rehab Nazzal
OTHER DOCUMENTARIES IN COMPETITION
All’Alba
Ilaria Lombardi
The Poem We Sang
Annie Sakkab
Bobby
Erica De Lisio
Finis Terrae
Marzia Rumi
Women For Iran
Sara Hourngir
The Silent Protest: 1929 Jerusalem
Mahasen Nasser Eldin
THE JURY
Francesca Romana Bergamo
Francesca Romana Bergamo is an actress from Naples. On screen, she has appeared in Ripley by Steven Zaillian alongside Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, and Johnny Flynn; in Partenope by Paolo Sorrentino; in Rosa Pietra Stella by Marcello Sannino (Rotterdam IFF 2020); in Ci devo pensare by Francesco Albanese; and in a small role in the latest film by Salvatore Piscicelli. For television, she was among the ensemble of the chaotic office in Pesci Piccoli (Prime Video, The Jackal) and appeared in I Bastardi di Pizzofalcone 2.
She collaborates with creative companies such as The Jackal and MAD Entertainment and, in parallel, pursues a theater career, training and working with artists such as Danio Manfredini, Mimmo Borrelli, Yari Gugliucci, Luciano Melchionna, and Davide Iodice. She has taken part in projects including Un Principe in frac (70th Edinburgh Festival) and La Luna, awarded the ANCT Critics’ Prize in 2019.
On social media, she has found a new expressive space: with her ironic and reflective monologues, she has won over a wide-ranging audience, becoming an original and recognizable voice.
“When I grow up,” she says, “I want to be able to laugh.”
Pino Bertelli
Pino Bertelli was born in a factory-town in Tuscany, between Il mio corpo ti scalderà and Rome, Open City. A “doctor in nothing,” he is a street photographer, filmmaker, and critic of cinema and photography. His works revolve around themes of diversity, marginalization, hospitality, migration, freedom, and the utopia of human love. He is considered one of the central figures of Italian radical situationist criticism.
In 1993, German director Jürgen Czwienk made a documentary about Bertelli’s political life and photographic work, Fotografare con i piedi. Director Bruno Tramontano created the short film Adoro solo l’oscurità e le ombre, based on Bertelli’s book Cinema della diversità 1895–1987: storie di svantaggio sul telo bianco. Mascheramento, mercificazione, autenticità. The painter Fiormario Cilvini illustrated the same text with a portfolio of 18 color drawings and a sculpture. Bertelli’s writings have been translated into several languages. In 1995, the International Writers Association (USA) named him “Writer of the Year” for Non-Fiction.
In 1997, his Pasolinian street portraits were exhibited (as the only photographer) in the show Le figure delle passioni alongside 16 international masters of art at Villa Pacchiani, Santa Croce sull’Arno [Pier Paolo Pasolini, mentor and friend, had given him his first camera when he was fifteen]. He is editor-in-chief of the radical criticism magazine Tracce, of Cobas (Journal of the School Base Committees), and of the online journal Stile libero. He is also editorial director of the publishing house Traccedizioni and curates the Zero in condotta social photography series for La città del sole. He collaborates with Le Monde diplomatique, Fotographia, Sicilia Libertaria, AParte. Materiali irregolari di cultura libertaria, and other publications.
In 1999, he received the Premio Castiglioncello for social photography. In 2004, he won the International Orvieto Award for best reportage book, Chernobyl. Portraits of a Contaminated Childhood. In 2014, the BACO Bioarchitecture Association awarded him the International Vittorio Giorgini Prize. Alessandro Allaria made a TV documentary for German television, Pino Bertelli. Il fotografo e le donne di Napoli (2008).
In 2014, director Antonio Manco made Pino Bertelli. Ritratto di un fotografo di strada in Buenos Aires, produced by the Human Rights Film Festival of Naples and Buenos Aires. In 2017, the book-film diptych Genti di Calabria. Atlante fotografico di geografia umana and I colori del cielo, directed by Francesco Mazza, was released. In 2018 came Il croco già fiorisce. Una passeggiata improvvisa a Piombino by Andrea Giovanni Semerano, featuring Enrico Ghezzi and Pino Bertelli. His photographic portraits are housed in international galleries, museums, academies, and private collections.
The International Archive of Social Photography of Pino Bertelli is curated by documentarian Paola Grillo (who collaborates on-site and with the texts of all Bertelli’s photographic books). Part of his photographic archive is held at the University of Parma. The Pino Bertelli Collection (about 5,000 books) can be consulted at the Berneri–Aurelio Chessa Family Archive.
