LA CREAZIONE DI SIGNIFICATO
(THE CREATION OF MEANING)
La creazione di significato (The Creation of Meaning) is set in the Tuscan Alps, where German occupying forces massacred hundreds of civilians during WWII, and follows the daily life of Pacifico, a shepherd born in the wake of the war among those same breathtaking landscapes. Blurring fiction, documentary and collaborative ethnographic observation, the film explores the transient nature of meaning by glimpsing at what Borges calls an Aleph, an allegorical singularity in space and time where past, present and future overlap and intertwine.
‑ Jason Anderson (Cinema Scope)
‑ Joshua Siegel (MoMA)
“both a poetic and a philosophical […] a sumptuous work of film aesthetics”
‑ Peter Dickinson (Anthropologica)
“powerful and delicate”
‑ A. O. Scott (The New York Times)
“majestic”
‑ Melissa Anderson (The Village Voice)
“a surreal, mesmerizing gem”
‑ Emily Buder (IndieWire)
“ravishing”
‑ Neil Young (The Hollywood Reporter)
“bold and daring”
‑ James Hansen (Filmmaker Magazine)
“mesmerizing”
‑ Nicolas Rapold (The New York Times)
“a lovely, laidback reverie”
‑ Ronnie Scheib (Variety)
“transcendent”
‑ Benjamin Mercer (Brooklyn Magazine)
“organically funny and admirably cohesive”
‑ Vadim Rizov (Filmmaker Magazine)
“as mystically ethereal as vividly earthy”
‑ Christopher Bourne (Twitch)
“delightfully contemplative”
‑ Maria Garcia (Film Journal International)
“simultaneously heady and lyrical”
‑ Carson Lund (Slant Magazine)
“both imposing and intimate, it subtly blurs the boundaries between heaven and earth, past and present, naturalism and existentialism”
‑ Charlotte Bonmati-Mullins (Point de vues)
“it devises a way of seeing that is both oneiric and anthropological”
‑ Helen Faradji (24images)
“directed with a precision that makes highly ordered mise-en-scènes appear loose and impromptu”
‑ Clayton Dillard (Slant Magazine)
“a flattening of time and space by means of timeless beauty itself, [...] constructed from breathtaking images and a wonderful softness of direction”
- Daniel Walber (Nonfics)
Awards and honours
2015 100% Rating, Rotten Tomatoes, USA
Top 50 Films of 2015, Critics RoundUp, USA
Best of Festival Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Best Film Award, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival, Las Palmas, Spain
Golden Apricot Award, Yerevan International Film Festival, Yerevan, Armenia
2014 Nominee, Golden Leopard Award, Locarno Film Festival, Locarno, Switzerland
Nominee, Best Italian Documentary Film Award, Torino Film Festival, Turin, Italy
Screenings (selected)
2018 CASCA-CUBA Film Festival, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
Social Science School, NYU Shanghai, Shanghai, China
Institute of Anthropology, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
2015 MoMA (one-week theatrical release), New York, NY, USA
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA
New Directors/New Films, MoMA/Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York, NY, USA
Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto, Canada
International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Moscow International Independent Film Festival, Moscow, Russia
FilmFest Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
London Open City Documentary Festival, London, UK
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival, Las Palmas, Spain
Greek Film Archive, Athens, Greece
National Intangible Heritage Centre, Jeonju, S. Korea
Yerevan International Film Festival, Yerevan, Armenia
Ljubljana International Film Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2014 Locarno International Film Festival, Locarno, Switzerland
Vancouver International Film Festival, Vancouver, Canada
Festival du nouveau cinéma, Montreal, Canada
Viennale International Film Festival, Vienna, Austria
Doclisboa International Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal
Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Mar del Plata, Argentina
Torino Film Festival, Turin, Italy
São Paulo International Film Festival, São Paulo, Brazil