Can cinema and theater contribute to the reintegration of prisoners into society? The first work “Regen fiel auf nichts Neues” (“Rain Fell on the Nothing New”, Germany, 2025) by the German director Steffen Goldkamp stimulates reflection. districts of Messina and Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto which make up the Libera Compagnia del Teatro per Sognare.
From today 28 July, at the Parco Fiera – Agorà dello Stretto, from 9.30 pm, in collaboration with the successful Rtp program The Stage, Noemi David will present, every evening at the opening of the Festival, some of the most brilliant talents who emerged last season of the programme. The first to perform will be Mary Mazzullo.
Tonight’s film, “Regen fiel auf nichts Neues”, is a neo-noir gangster film with an intimate and rarefied atmosphere shot on 16mm and 35mm film, which depicts the difficult social reintegration of young David after a period of juvenile detention. Welcomed into a protection structure and hired as an assistant cook, the protagonist tries to walk straight between bureaucracy and stable affections. However, the loss of his job and the weight of his old criminal ties break this precarious balance, dragging him back into the abyss of delinquency. Director Steffen Goldkamp, trained at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg, always attentive to social marginalization, uses this microcosm to analyze the short circuit of youth recidivism. The film has built an international path of the highest level in first-tier festivals and the protagonist Noah Sayenko obtained the Young Actors Award in Germany at the Internationales Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg. In Italy, the film was also selected in competition at the Giffoni Film Festival (Generator +18 section), but has not yet had any distribution in Italian cinemas. The director Steffen Goldkamp with his presence in Messina thus consolidates his bond with Italy, after having competed in the past in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival with the short “Nach zwei Stunden waren zehn Minuten vergangen”.
Preceding him, for the Italian short films competition “Il Portiere” by Salvatore Lizzio and Daniele Bonarini (Italy, 2024). The work takes us to the heart of the Second World War, where a carefree football match between children with disabilities is abruptly interrupted: the very young goalkeeper Zeno is captured by Nazi soldiers. The team will decide to carry out a courageous and supportive rescue mission. The short combines Lizzio’s attentive gaze with the experience of Bonarini’s Poti Pictures from Arezzo, a unique reality that promotes inclusion by bringing actors with intellectual disabilities onto the set.
The intense day of the Festival does not only focus on the event at the Agora but offers at the Apollo Cinema, in the afternoon starting from 4pm, the out-of-competition screening of “40 Secondi” (Italy, 2025), the film by Vincenzo Alfieri produced by Eagle Pictures (the production company will receive, this evening, the Regina del Peloro award, created by the iron artist Fabio Pilato, presented to the delegate producer Vanessa Zerda). The director analyzes in the form of a lucid moral story the dramatic twenty-four hours preceding the tragic death of Willy Monteiro Duarte, brutally killed in Colleferro in 2020. Alfieri crosses the destinies of executioners and victims of the Italian province, culminating in those fatal forty seconds of violence that broke an innocent young life.
Following, the eagerly awaited Masterclass entitled “Women, Cinema and Civil Commitment”. The talk, which is divided into reflections on women’s rights that are not always respected and on the need to stem the phenomenon of violence against women, will be conducted by the UniVersoMe Newspaper Unit Director Carla Fiorentino, and will see discussions with the delegate producer and Production Supervisor for Eagle Pictures, former executive coordinator in Italy of international blockbusters such as “Dune: Part Two”, Vanessa Zerda Rueda, the film composer and vice-president of “Mujeres nel Cinema”, an association created to promote and protect the talent of women in the audiovisual sector Silvia Leonetti, the internationally renowned Messina cartoonist Lelio Bonaccorso (Marvel, DC, Disney). Among other things, Bonaccorso, during the opening evening, presented the unpublished graphic novel of the never-made ending of “The Star Man” by Giuseppe Tornatore, a project strongly supported by the historic cultural operator and essayist Ninni Panzera, who recently passed away.
The meeting will also see the extraordinary participation of Maria Andaloro, activist from Messina and creator of “Posto Occupato”, the social awareness campaign against gender violence born in 2013 and which has become a fundamental national symbol. Andaloro will also intervene during the evening at the Agorà dello Strait.
Photo Giuseppe Contarini