Alejo Franzetti

A year in Berlin: Leonie wanders through the city and the texts of Anna Maria Ortese. Speaking with friends and translator Sigrid Vagt, she is also looking for the narrative threads of her own life. A film of reading shot in glowing, matter-of-fact 16mm.

Film in two cities divided by one river: Buenos Aires, Montevideo. Two cities divided by one story: the death of Francisco. One death divided in two parts: an investigation, an escape.

On the banks of the city of Buenos Aires, among the rubble that forms the coast of her ecological reserve, she listens attentively to the confession. The rest, what follows, will be mere inconveniences and questions between a corpse and a double bass, between the imperfect city and its river, which will sow doubt about the resistance of its revenge.

Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.

Amadou was born in Burkina Faso. Amadou lives in Marseille. Amadou comes to Berlin to repatriate the body of his brother Issaka to Burkina Faso. The Panke is a small river that is born in Bernau, to the north of Berlin, and that after crossing great part of the city ends in the Spree. It has an extension of 29 kilometers.

I swear to you that this that I am going to tell is absolutely true: a daring sparrow, a girl who smokes cigarettes, a forest and Julián, in January in Buenos Aires.

Film in two cities divided by one river: Buenos Aires, Montevideo. Two cities divided by one story: the death of Francisco. One death divided in two parts: an investigation, an escape.

On the banks of the city of Buenos Aires, among the rubble that forms the coast of her ecological reserve, she listens attentively to the confession. The rest, what follows, will be mere inconveniences and questions between a corpse and a double bass, between the imperfect city and its river, which will sow doubt about the resistance of its revenge.

On the banks of the city of Buenos Aires, among the rubble that forms the coast of her ecological reserve, she listens attentively to the confession. The rest, what follows, will be mere inconveniences and questions between a corpse and a double bass, between the imperfect city and its river, which will sow doubt about the resistance of its revenge.

Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.

Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.

Amadou was born in Burkina Faso. Amadou lives in Marseille. Amadou comes to Berlin to repatriate the body of his brother Issaka to Burkina Faso. The Panke is a small river that is born in Bernau, to the north of Berlin, and that after crossing great part of the city ends in the Spree. It has an extension of 29 kilometers.

I swear to you that this that I am going to tell is absolutely true: a daring sparrow, a girl who smokes cigarettes, a forest and Julián, in January in Buenos Aires.

On a Monday morning in Berlin, Rachelle is driving home. Issaka, far away in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, writes her a message. Rachelle replies with one of her special messages, a reminder of the long night. Her nocturnal journey took her through Tiergarten. Surrounded by darkness, places seem smaller, almost unreal. A cinematic nocturne that appropriates space through language.