MILAN, ITALY. – Another win is the Official Selection just announced by the 24th Milano Film Festival, where Arthur Balder’s unique cinematic vision AMERICAN MIRROR: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY has been selected as part of the most exclusive curatorial section: The Outsiders (12 films in total), a non-competitive section made of outstanding films from the international scene which, in the festival own words “are Italian premières by authors who are famous names but unfairly invisible in theatres, new challenges, stories that fascinate us.”
This great achievement is increased by the films that are part of the selection. “The Beach Bum” by Harmony Korine and starring Academy Award-winner Matthew McConaughey as the mad poet Moondog is one of them. The American Korine, a controversial author already seen at the MFF with Mister Lonely (2007) and Trash Humpers (2008), signs his most light-hearted, but still melancholic, work amid the lights of Miami.
Instead “We are Little Zombies”, the debut of Makoto Nagahisa, in the name of a vintage videogame aesthetic, and distorts a difficult subject such as mourning in childhood: having no parents is not so difficult, if you have the courage to form a band to conquer the world.
Two films trace the elaboration and evolution of desire. The first is Searching Eva by Pia Hellenthal, at the Festival in collaboration with VICE Italia, the portrait of the atypical sexworker and artist Eva Collé, a brilliant reflection on social media and identity. The second one explores an icon: Cercando Valentina – Il mondo di Guido Crepax by Giancarlo Soldi, in which we discover the birth of a girl that changed eroticism and comics in an international Milan in the 1960s.
Lastly, two other films dialogue with the theme of the International Feature Film Competition, marked by a reinterpretation of film genres: the first is by a master of Japanese cinema, Takashi Miike, who mixes noir and comedy explosively in First Love, the second is by the Portuguese João Nicolau, at the MFF with his debut Rapace (2006) and now a famous author who, touching approaching musical comedy, tells the story of Luís Rovisco (Miguel Lobo Antunes), a wild and crazy over 60 Peter Pan in Technoboss.