Country: Italy
Year: 2000
Duration: 60'
Ophelia turns to Hamlet and talks to him, but he - in reality - is not there. A void divides them. She speaks alone while she seems to go over moments of her life path and to cross a variety of spaces that themselves are far from each other. Where is Hamlet? He lives through her madness in a building that has decayed and been transformed into an apartment in a modern condominium building. Next to him, Gertrude, the queen mother, is seeking a kind of dignity for herself, but fate has entangled her and transforms her horribly bit by bit.
"Ophelia Afar comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, dismembered and often barbarized. It maintain the centrality of the figure of Ophelia, who is suspended on the edge of her protracted adolescence. Hamlet is almost boyishly demented with flashes of girlish malice. Gertrude is a separated mother and queen without a crown. I like it when theater becomes cinema and vice versa." (Tonino De Bernardi)
Biography
film director
Tonino De Bernardi
(Chivasso, Turin, Italy, 1937) was an underground filmmaker from 1967 to 1983. He shot his first “official” feature in 1987: the film Elettra (based on Sophocles’ tragedy), produced by RAI3, involved the participation of non-professional actors from Casalborgone, where he worked as a middle school teacher until 1992. Viaggio a Sodoma (1988) was the co-winner, with Jean-Luc Godard’s film, of the World Wide Video Festival in Den Hag. He participated at the Venice Film Festival in competition with Appassionate (1999), and in Orizzonti with Médée miracle (2007), starring Isabelle Huppert. A restless filmmaker overflowing with projects, he makes at least a film a year. In 2018, together with his wife Mariella, he’s also protagonist of Teresa Villaverde’s O termómetro de Galileu, presented at TFF, in Onde section, just like many others films of De Bernardis'.
FILMOGRAFIA
Dei (1968-1969), Il quadrato (1971-1972), Il rapporto coniugal parentale (1973-1976), L’io e le aggregazioni (1977-1979), Donne (1980-1982), Viaggio a Sodoma (1988), Piccoli orrori (1994), Fiori del destino (1997), Appassionate (1999), Rosatigre (2000), La strada nel bosco (2001), Farelavita (2001), Lei (2002), Le cinéma dans tous ses états (ep. Terra, cm, 2002), Serva e padrona (2003), Latitudini (2003), Marlene de Sousa (2004), Passato presente (2005), Accoltellati (Accoltellatori) (2006), Médée miracle (2007), Pane/Piazza delle camelie (2008), Butterfly - L’attesa (2010), Ed è così. Circa. Più o meno (2011), Casa dolce casa (2012), Hotel de l’Univers (2013), Jour et nuit - Delle donne e degli uomini perduti (2014), Il sogno dell’India - Quarant’anni dopo (2015), Ifigenia in Aulide (2018), Resurrezione (2019), Ou n'etes vous? (mm, 2022), Universi circoscritti 2 (2022).
Cast
& Credits
Director: Tonino De Bernardi.
Plot: da Amleto di William Shakespeare.
Screenplay: Tonino De Bernardi, Filippo Timi.
Director of photography: Tonino De Bernardi.
Editor: Massimiliano Ferraina.
Cast: Giulietta De Bernardi, Isabel Ruth, Filippo Timi, Tonino De Bernardi.
Production company and Italian distribution: Lontane Province Film, strada Santa Maria 2, 10020 Casalborgone (Torino), Italia, tel. +39-011-4366446.
Plot: da Amleto di William Shakespeare.
Screenplay: Tonino De Bernardi, Filippo Timi.
Director of photography: Tonino De Bernardi.
Editor: Massimiliano Ferraina.
Cast: Giulietta De Bernardi, Isabel Ruth, Filippo Timi, Tonino De Bernardi.
Production company and Italian distribution: Lontane Province Film, strada Santa Maria 2, 10020 Casalborgone (Torino), Italia, tel. +39-011-4366446.