Country: Spain
Year: 2024
Duration: 10'
Marta and Aysha play in a post-apocalyptic desert. Marta asks her friend to accompany her to her grandparents’ house, as she wouldn’t be able to make it on her own. Their journey becomes a poetic metaphor for children’s experience after a catastrophe — an intimate look at childhood in the face of loss and transformation.
Biography
film director
Michele Aiello
(Italy), a graduate in International Relations, is a documentary filmmaker and trainer in audiovisual production. He is currently developing a feature film about young Ukrainian dancers (Pryvit Europa, finalist at the Premio Solinas in 2023) and his first animated short, Il mio corpo di pace. His documentary Io resto (2021) premiered at Visions du Réel in Nyon and went on to win numerous awards in Italy, including the Biografilm Italy Award 2021.
FILMOGRAFIA
FuoriClasse (doc, 2016), Violent Borders (doc, cm, 2017), Paese Nostro (doc, 2017), Un giorno la notte (doc, 2020), Io resto (doc, 2021).
Declaration
film director
“I made Mi casa amarilla during the 3rd Aceleradora de Cine – La Palma, Canary Islands, ‘Werner Herzog: Bajo el volcán.’ The production company LaSelva selected and paired professionals who had not met before the residency began — one as director and the other as director of photography. For eleven days, Werner Herzog guided these pairs through a process of free cinematic creation. Personally, when I saw the list of people who had agreed to take part as protagonists or witnesses, I immediately understood the importance of telling Marta’s story — a ten-year-old girl. She was willing to share her story because she wanted to show us her grandparents’ new home. So we asked her to take us to their old house, accompanied by her best friend Aysha. In 2021, an eruption that lasted 85 days struck a large area of the island of La Palma, destroying nearly three thousand buildings and affecting the lives of about two hundred boys and girls. I believe Mi casa amarilla is a story that invites reflection on major natural disasters and on the traumas experienced by children - often overshadowed by the economic and social consequences of the adult world.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTION, EDITING: Michele Aiello. SCREENPLAY: Michele Aiello, Kate Martyr. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kate Martyr. MUSIC: Francesco Ambrosini, Thomas Meckel, Josephine Stamer. SOUND: Francesco Ambrosini. ARTISTIC CONSULTING: Werner Herzog, Peter Zeitlinger. CAST: Marta Lorenzo Álvarez, Aysha San Juan Gainzarain. PRODUCTION: LaSelva Coop, with Michele Aiello and Kate Martyr, in collaboration with Werner Herzog Stiftung, La Botica Audiovisual. CO-PRODUCTION: Deutsche Kinemathek, La Palma Film Commission, Sodepal, Cabildo de La Palma, Ayuntamiento de Fuencaliente.
CONTACT: Michele Aiello ajemike@gmail.com
