The Cinema del Presente 2024 award of the ShorTS International Film Festival goes to the D’Innocenzo brothers.
The award is to be presented on Saturday 29 June at the Teatro Miela in Trieste, with a public masterclass by the directors.
The 25th ShorTS International Film Festival (Trieste, 28 June – 6 July 2024) has announced the Cinema del Presente Award. The prize, intended for directors at the peak of their significant, original, structured narrative and aesthetic and technical process, will be awarded at this year’s Festival to Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo. The awarding of the prize, scheduled for Saturday 29 June at the Teatro Miela, will be accompanied by a public masterclass conducted by Maurizio di Rienzo (artistic director of ShorTS IFF), focusing on the D’Innocenzo brothers’ career and punctuated by sequences from their films.
Maurizio di Rienzo explained the awarding of the Cinema del Presente 2024 award as follows: “Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo are filmmakers whose cinema is characterised by evocative realism, analysis of the twists and bends of the soul, observation of intense family and friendship dynamics, and narration of the natural violence of life. We believe these are the cardinal expressive and dramaturgical points of their stories, referred not only to Rome’s suburbs and residential areas, but also to the ‘psychological’ area that covers feelings. Their filmmaking boasts the calibrated contribution of choices common to all technical and artistic team members and is then embodied on set by always ad hoc actors, aware of and equally lost in the end in the daily whirlpools of affections, duties and destinies of the characters.
A storytelling mechanism inherent in their meticulously participatory poetics of the human dimension: from the dazzling debut of La terra dell’abbastanza (2018), Nastro d’Argento for best directing debut, to the impressive Favolacce (2020), winner of four Nastri d’Argento and one David di Donatello, as well as the Orso d’Argento for the screenplay at the Berlinale, to the abyss of America Latina (2021), Nastro d’Argento for the storyline, up to the apparently serial but totally cinematic narrative of Dostoevskij (2024), presented at the last Berlinale. Even their work as writers collaborating with Matteo Garrone for Dogman and other non-coincidental directors means that the present is well within the frame of their mental and equally visceral vision as authors of words and stories that are extremely meaningful, and at times profoundly unsettling”.
These are the words of the two directors: “We would like to express our thanks for this award that falls on such an important date, the 25th Festival, a recognition that touches on our work with precise and warm-hearted rationales. We thank the artistic director of the ShorTS International Film Festival of Trieste, Maurizio di Rienzo, and his entire team. We came to Trieste years ago as jurors and we remember the Festival as a very present and like-minded entity: free, smart and tenacious. A gentle fighter that we can call “friend”.
Their latest work, the Dostoevskij series, produced by Sky Studios with Paco Cinematografica and starring Filippo Timi and with Gabriel Montesi, Carlotta Gamba and Federico Vanni, will soon be in cinemas with Vision Distribution, and then available on Sky and streamed on NOW.
Biography
Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo were born in Rome on 14 July 1988. Completely self-taught, they made their first feature film La terra dell’abbastanza (2018), presented at the Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama section. They subsequently collaborated on the screenplay for Dogman (2018, Matteo Garrone), published a book of poems (Mia madre è un’arma, La Nave di Teseo) and one of photographs (Farmacia Notturna, Contrasto). With their second feature film, Favolacce (2020), presented in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, they won the Silver Bear for best screenplay, while the subsequent America Latina was in competition at the 78th Venice International Film Festival.
Dostoevskij, their first TV series – of which they are creators, screenwriters and directors, is presented at the 74th Berlin Film Festival and can soon be seen in cinemas. In 2024, they directed their first music video for Kanye West’s track Talking/Once Again.
