Through its Ateliers, the 52nd edition of the International Film Festival Nyon will celebrate the body of work of the Mexican-Salvadoran director Tatiana Huezo and the Italian director Pietro Marcello by holding two major retrospectives.
Visions du Réel will have the joy and honour of hosting Tatiana Huezo, a filmmaker who has had ties with the Festival for many years, and Pietro Marcello, an adventurous director with a singular body of work, as part of the Festival’s 2021 Ateliers. The works of the two filmmakers, in their respective uniqueness, enable us to further demonstrate the artistic importance and diversity of the contemporary non-fiction filmmaking landscape.
The wealth of their cinematographical horizons will also be the subject of two public Masterclasses, true to the tradition of the Ateliers. Pietro Marcello is invited in partnership with the HEAD (Geneva University of Art and Design).
Through a body of work as committed as it is personal, Tatiana Huezo paints the portrait of her country and relentlessly denounces the mechanisms of terror, employing a poetic and sensitive cinematographical language, which succeeds, with great decency, in giving substance to absence, violence and suffering.
Born in Salvador and living in Mexico, Tatiana Huezo graduated from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) film school and holds a Master’s in Documentary Filmmaking from Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University. After her first attempts—short films such as Arido (1992), Familia (2004) or Sueño (2005)—she gained international renown with her first feature-length film, El lugar más pequeño (2011), presented as an international premiere at Visions du Réel in 2011 where it won the Grand Prix for the Best Feature-length Film.
Building on this success, the film was programmed by more than 80 festivals around the world. Then, following the short film Ausencias (2015), she directed Tempestad (2016), which was presented as a world premiere at the Berlinale (Forum section) where it won four Ariel awards—presented by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences.
Over recent years, she has taught film in various international academic contexts and also written the book El Viaje, rutas y caminos andados para llegar a otro planeta, in which eight documentary filmmakers describe their creative processes. In 2021, she is unveiling her first fictional film, Noche de fuego.
Noche de fuego, 2021
Tempestad, 2016
El aula vacía, (short : Ver, oír y callar), 2015
Ausencias, 2015
The Tiniest Place, 2011
Sueño, 2005
Familia, 2004
The Core of the Earth, 2001
Tiempo caústico, 1997
Arido, 1992
As for Pietro Marcello, his work, falling within a formally audacious and sensual contemporary Italian cinematographical—often non-fiction—scene (Alice Rohrwacher, Michelangelo Frammartino, Roberto Minervini, etc.), is imbued with his profound interest for literature and art history, constantly reinventing cinematographical codes with humanism, romanticism and great artistic freedom.
Pietro Marcello was born in Caserta in Campania in 1976. He began by studying painting at the Naples Academy of Fine Arts. Self-taught, he cut his teeth on “participative videos” shot in the prisons where he was teaching. From 1998 to 2003, he programmed the Cinedamm film events, at the Damm centre in the Montesanto district, of which he was one of the founding members. It was in this context that he directed his first short films Carta and Scampia (2003). In 2004, he completed Il cantiere, a documentary that won the Libero Bizzarri Prize.
The following year, he directed La Baracca. His first feature-length film, Crossing the Line (Il passaggio della linea, 2007), won many accolades. But it was in 2009 with The Mouth of the Wolf (La bocca del lupo), which won awards at Turin and at the Berlinale (Forum section), that he gained international recognition. In 2011, he paid tribute to Artavazd Peleshian in The Silence of Pelesjan (Il silenzio di Pelesjan), while Lost and Beautiful (Bella e perduta, 2015), in selection at Locarno and the Grand prix du Jury at La Roche-sur-Yon, brought him a wider audience. In 2019, Martin Eden, adapted from the eponymous Jack London novel, was presented at the Venice Film Festival and met with great critical acclaim.
Moreover, the film embodies the move of Marcello’s work to fiction, while keeping a very strong link with the documentary genre. His new opus For Lucio (Per Lucio) will be presented at the 2021 Berlinale.
For Lucio, expected release 2021
Martin Eden, 2019
Ossessione, 2016
Lost and Beautiful, 2015
9×10 Novanta, (segment L’umile Italia), 2014
Venice 70, Future Reloaded, (segment Pietro Marcello), 2013
Marco Bellocchio, Venezia, 2011
The Silence of Pelesjan, 2011
Napoli 24, (segment Rettifilo), 2010
The Mouth of the Wolf, 2009
Crossing the Line, 2007
La baracca, 2005
Il cantiere, 2004
Scampia, 2003
Carta, 2003