2023 Ristretto Shorts

Super Jesus, by Vito Palumbo
Italy, 2022, 20'
Carlo is nine-years-old, lives in Taranto, and is seriously ill. Carlo is very passionate about Jesus, his favorite superhero. He suffers from catatonic crisis, suddenly being completely absent. Ugo is in his forties, put aside from work with insurance from the giant steel mill where he works. Atheist and communist, but needy. He decides to take part in a mysterious casting, with a considerable reward, for the role of Jesus. That’s how Ugo, to make Carlo happy, plays the part of the biggest superhero of all times: Super Jesus.

Dust, by Paolo Carboni
Italy, 2023, 29'
It is the end of 1985. Things have changed in Cagliari for some time. The city is plunged into darkness. Now Cagliari is ugly, dirty but above all bad. Fault of drugs, which like a flooded river has invaded the streets. On the evening of December 23, two bandits, armed and with their faces covered by balaclavas, break into a liquor store, inside there is a man in his sixties, the robbers order the owner to hand over the proceeds. the man does not allow himself to be intimidated and reacts, a scuffle ensues, two shots are fired the owner remains on the ground lifeless What appears to be an easy robbery becomes a crime that shakes the city to its foundations and plunges it definitively into a nightmare from which he will emerge alone twenty years later.

Briciole / Crumbs, by Rebecca Cipolla
Italy, 2022, 16'
Alfredo is a police man, he lives with his three sons and his wife Donatella in a small apartment. The family is waiting for the fourth son. The job, and the arrival of the baby and the small and the big problems of life are oppressing himself. An emergency call for an armed robbery will changes his vision of life.

Macerie, by Federico Mazzarisi
Italy, 2022, 20'
Wreckage is what remains after an earthquake. What used to be a perfect, furnished house suddenly becomes just dust and rubble. Some see a past world from that wreckage, and those see a new world. Nino went as far as the ruins of the Grand Hotel to look for his mother, Azzurra, who abandoned him a few years earlier. Nino came there to take her home and get answers. But there is one person he did not expect: Malatesta, a boy his age who seems to have a relationship with his mother. Azzurra, together with him and the boy's uncle, Pasqualone, wants to put the hotel back in order, to bring it back to the golden period of its past. Nino's jealousy will push him to the extreme, leading him to discover the truth about his mother's abandonment.

Riders, by Andrea Russo
Italy, 2022, 13'
A rider delivers a package containing a piece of a dead body to a lady, an investigation will begin to discover the culprit of the crime. The protagonists will recount the events of that night a year later, through the testimonies of three different points of view, we will retrace the events related to the discovery of a package, delving into the mystery surrounding the riders' work.
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Miss Agata, by Anna Elena Pepe, Sebastian Maulucci
Italy, 2022, 20'
An Italian-style Bridget Jones moves from Piemonte to Ferrara in her grandmother's old house to escape a stalker ex-boyfriend. When Nabil, a shy refugee from Gambia, manages to make her smile again, she wrongly becomes convinced that he could be the answer to ALL her problems.

Closed to the Light, by Nicola Piovesan
Italy, 2021, 10'
The film freezes in time the terrible tragedy of an execution that took place in Italy in the summer of 1944, to the detriment of innocent peasants. An articulated long shot in which everything is still and everything changes.

An End to War Enough, by Simone Massi
Italy, 2022, 5'
A world without war is another utopia that we cannot wait any longer.

La bambola di pezza, by Nicola Conversa
Italy, 2022, 16'
Dream, write, tell a story. Your words become a story, your online diary becomes public. A way to share your emotions and find other souls with passions and fears. Mia (Mariasole Pollio) is 16 years old and thanks to her virtual diary get in contact with Tommaso (Giancarlo Commare) a sensitive, careful and full of energy Prince Charming, tailor made for her. A magic encounter made by chat and later on video call until the fateful event: see each other in person...

Overseas, by Federico Russotto
Italy, 2021, 17'
Aureliano e Simone seem to belong to different planets. They don’t speak much, their common language is fencing. With each lunge they will test their talent and loyalty.

Leaving the Factory, by Virginia Paganelli
Italy, 2022, 26'
"Leaving the Factory" is based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City (March 25, 1911), which killed 143 women garment workers, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history. This dramatization explores the life of Italian-American immigrant women in the early 20th Century, striving to support their families, while fighting for humane working conditions.

What Remains (Qualcosa Resta), by Pasquale Napolitano
Italy, 2022, 30'
It was after seven in the evening on November 23, 1980 when a frightening earthquake of magnitude 6.9 hit an area of ​​about 25,000 km2 in southern Italy.

Un milione di italiani non sono italiani, by Maurizio Braucci
Italy, 2022, 18'
Un milione di italiani follows two young Neapolitan singers, Fatima and Sara, whose parents come from Senegal and Sri Lanka. Fatima is grappling with a love that doesn't want to end, and Sara is about to record her first disk. With a letter, the Italian government asks them if they want to become Italian citizens, one request that appears absurd given the profound belonging of the two girls to the context in which they live and were born. The two young women are called to sing live "Era de Maggio", a classic Neapolitan song, with the famous singer Maria Pia De Vito. And we find out what the dialect is their musical mother tongue.

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