Invelle, the making of which took more than 12 years, is the first feature film by the illustrator, animator and director from the Marche region, who delves into a story between an autobiography and the History of Italy, which traces the years between the First World War and the Years of Lead.
A monumental work – 90 minutes of manual step-by-step animation, fourty thousand drawing boards, nearly 100 illustrators/animators, 4 years of work – with which the author wants to compensate his homeland, a land of poverty and anger, at the center of which are the stories of three children who pass the baton from one generation to another of the same family, sharing rituals, misery, difficulties, and attachment to their land. A story brought to the big screen with “affection, nostalgia and gratitude”, free of filters and sentimentalism.
It is 1918 and Zelinda is a girl living in the countryside whose mother is in heaven and father at war. She has to put her childhood down and take up instead the burden of the house, her siblings, the cattle shed and livestock. One day Zelinda finds she has a mother and father again. At the village fair the little girl clings to her papa and opens her eyes wide to make room for all the things that have appeared in front of her. Be they real or imagined, Zelinda has seen those things now and has got an idea of how the world turns. It turns so fast that her story becomes someone else’s. In 1943 Assunta is a girl in the countryside who balances on one leg, with her head in the clouds and a foot in the war (another one!). But as soon as she can Assunta sews a colored dress for herself, takes a skip and all of a sudden the war has become a joke, or at least it’s over. The war (perhaps!) is over, and with it a whole world disappears: that skip was bigger than it seemed. In 1978 Icaro is a little boy in the countryside whose life turns around nothing. He has to do and is going to do something that was dreamed-of many years earlier and was not possible for his mother and his grandmother. And for those who came before them. And before that. And even before that.
«In the part of the world where I was born and raised there is nothing important to see and remember, nothing that could be considered worthy of ending up in a book. A sort of “Nowhere,” a non-place from which history has demanded and taken everything that it wanted and could. In exchange for that history we have gotten stories, the kind that are either passed on orally or are lost».
Simone Massi
Simone Massi was born in Pergola on May 23, 1970, where he still lives in an old country house in the hills of the Marche region, far away from modernity, from the environments that count.
A former worker, who later trained at the Scuola del Libro (School of the Book) in Urbino, he thought up and drew the frames of his films one by one in a tiring, meticulous job.
He has created and directed animations selected for festivals in 75 countries around the world. Winner of over 300 awards, including a David di Donatello, three Nastri d’Argento, a Flaiano Award for the animation created within the documentary La strada dei Samouni, the Oeil d’Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2018.
Invelle is his first feature film.
Production:
Minimum Fax Media (Salvatore Pecoraro, Daniele di Gennaro), in collaboration with RAI Kids, in coproduction with Amka Films (Amel Soudani, Olga Lamontanara, Rhea PLANGG, Michela PINI) and RSI, Radio Televisione Svizzera, with the support of MiC, Eurimges and Regione Lazio, ECRA Edizioni del Credito Cooperativo
Here the program with the official screenings in Venice:
PROGRAM CINEMA 2023 (PUBLIC)
09/08
16:45
Sala Darsena
09/09
15:30
PalaBiennale
PROGRAM CINEMA 2023 (PASS HOLDERS)
09/07
19:30
Sala Pasinetti
09/07
21:45
Sala Casinò
09/08
16:45
Sala Darsena
09/09
15:30
PalaBiennale
