40° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
ITALIAN DOCUMENTARIES/OUT OF COMPETITION
PARLATE A BASSA VOCE
by Esmeralda Calabria
Country: Italy
Year: 2022
Duration: 81'
Albania, the most impenetrable of the former communist countries in Europe: isolationist, Stalinist, anti-revisionist. More than thirty years after the fall of the regime, the weight of this memory still lives in everyone encountered in the movie. Musicians, actors, directors, the privileged and the downgraded, all recount the contradictions of a system that had the face of the dictator Enver Hoxha, a “great father” who gave and who took away. A cumbersome past that accentuates the weaknesses and the ambiguities of the young democracy. Everything that, today, could seem like a parody, wasn't at the time. Redi Hasa, a cellist, begins a journey that starts with the memories, the fears to forget, and a desire to stop time.
Biography
film director
Esmeralda Calabria
Film editor, she has collaborated with various directors, including Roberto Andò, Francesca Archibugi, Giorgio Diritti, the D’Innocenzo brothers, Nanni Moretti, Giuseppe Piccioni, Michele Placido, and Paolo Virzì. Over the course of her career, she has won three David di Donatello, two Golden Ciak awards and two Silver Ribbons for her work as a film editor. In 2007, with Peppe Ruggiero and Andrea D’Ambrosio, she directed her first feature film, Biùtiful cauntri, which won a special mention at the Torino Film Festival and a Silver Ribbon for best documentary. In 2016, she founded the production company Akifilm, with which she produced the documentaries Upwelling by Pietro Pasquetti and Silvia Jop (Jury Prize at Vision du Réel at Nyon); Lievito madre, which she edited and co-directed with Concita De Gregorio (Special Event at the 2017 Venice Film Festival); In questo mondo by Anna Kauber, winner in the Italiana.doc section at the 2018 Torino Film Festival; and the short Preghiera della sera by Giuseppe Piccioni (Orizzonti, 2021 Venice Film Festival).
FILMOGRAFIA
Biùtiful cauntri (coregia Peppe Ruggiero, Andrea D’Ambrosio, doc, 2007), Lievito madre - Le ragazze del secolo scorso (coregia Concita De Gregorio, doc, 2017), Parlate a bassa voce (doc, 2022).
Declaration
film director
“Parlate a bassa voce is a fragmentary attempt to recount a feeling it doesn't accept, as the only way out, to forget, repress the past, hide the shame, and accept a future unconditionally because nothing could be worse that what there used to be. And it isn't even permitted to be too finicky in the face of the new injustices of the young democracy; we don't have the right. We can't be expected to recount everything, but to open windows, enter, and leave. The movie camera moves with continuous changes of course, deletions, omissions, episodes that happened right then, and, in a few cases, enactments that were constructed, purposefully contrived, in search of an impossible synthesis.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY, FILM EDITING: Esmeralda Calabria. STORY: Titti Santini, Esmeralda Calabria. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mirko Pincelli, Mattia Epifani. DIRECTOR'S COLLABORATOR: Mirko Pincelli. MUSIC: Redi Hasa. SOUND: Michele Leucci, Antonio Giannantonio. CAST: Redi Hasa, Ekland Hasa, Meteli Hasa e Afërdita Hasko Hasa, Edmond Budina, Xhavit Lohja, Bojken Lako, Gjetë Gjoni e la sua famiglia Preng, Mrikë, Gjergj, Rita Gjeka, Arjan Çela e la sua famiglia. PRODUCERS: Titti Santini, Esmeralda Calabria. PRODUCTION: Akifilm, Ponderosa Music Records.
CONTACT:
Akifilm info@akifilm.com
