It is the director’s short film “Caramelle”. Matteo Panebarco to have won the fourth edition of the Cineclub dei piccolo, the film festival dedicated to childhood, which took place in Palermo, Messina and Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (Messina).
The event, whose final evening was hosted at the Cinema Lux in Messina, is organized by the cultural associations Arknoah and Cineforum Orione in collaboration with FICC – Italian Federation of Cinema Clubs and Europa Cinemas, with the artistic direction of Francesco Torre and with the involvement of comprehensive schools whose students were given the role of Jury and participated in laboratory activities dedicated to cinema.
The short film “Caramelle” was the most voted by the student jury and also won the FICC – Italian Federation of Cinema Clubs award for best direction.
The schools involved this year were the State Educational Directorate “A. Gabelli” of Palermo, the “Enzo Drago” and “San Francesco di Paola” comprehensive institutes of Messina and the “Capuana” comprehensive institute of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto.
This is the motivation of the FICC jury: “The animated film Caramelle tells of memories and mischief in front of a family tomb. The frame of the story and the characters involved, including a cute little dog, are well drawn and represented, as is the musical part and the sounds that form the backdrop to a true story. The final moral is of important reflection: family harmony is recomposed thanks to the generous soul and goodness of the child protagonist, who manages to transform the symbolic value of the sweetness of a candy into peace, love and serenity of his family”.
Matteo Panebarco’s work, inspired by a true story, tells of a very strong emotional bond that unites three generations: father/grandfather, daughter/mother, grandson/son. A relationship so strong that it overcomes the boundaries between life and death, the earthly world and the afterlife, in an atmosphere of fascinating magical realism.
The story is simple: Lucia is a 40-year-old woman who occasionally visits her father’s grave in the city cemetery. One day she finds a colored candy wrapper crumpled up on the grave. The curious episode will repeat itself several times, until Lucia discovers why. The “pivot” of the story are the sweets of the title, a sort of pop reinterpretation of the Proustian madeleine.
This short is a Panebarco & C. production in association with Mediterraneo Cinematografica for a WeShort Originals, and is supported by the Emilia-Romagna Film Commission, the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Ravenna.
The artistic direction was entrusted to the Concept and Visual Designer Carlo Casavecchia; the short film was made using the 3D animation technique, but the backdrops are photographic and show unusual corners of the city of Ravenna, in the Darsena area, in the present day, with flashbacks, references and dives into the past.
Francesco Torre, artistic director of the Festival, takes stock of this fourth edition of the Children’s Cineclub: “The competition has given its verdict but all the shorts were welcomed by the 1,000 children involved with great enthusiasm, and therefore applause must also be given to everyone the other authors in the competition. Italian animated cinema is alive and vital, and the cinema can still count on an unsurpassed appeal towards the new generations. The Cineclub dei Piccoli is this: promotion of the cinematographic language, of animated cinema, of Italian cinema, of cinema viewing. And the very positive feedback from this edition, with schools and the public, gives us motivation and responsibility for an even more open fifth edition full of meetings, screenings and workshops”.