Stories of teenagers, parents, their children and memory dominated the second day of the 8th TFL Meeting Event (25-27 November). Whilst the Turin Film Festival showcased eight of the most recent films to be supported by the lab and released this year (including Underground Fragrance [+lire aussi :
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interview : Pengfei
fiche film], Mountain [+lire aussi :
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interview : Yaelle Kayam
fiche film], The Wakhan Front [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]) in a dedicated section, pitches of projects still under development continued at the Holden School, in the running for a production award from the TorinoFilmLab (as part of the FrameWork programme). Polish-Israeli filmmaker Jack Faber’s project A A (an Extreme Emotions production) is about violent teenagers in a post-traumatic society, in which a rite of passage to becoming an adult becomes a character assassination. A neurotic teen, meanwhile, is the protagonist of Nothing Else Mattress by Bryn Chainey (being produced by Revolver Films), a comedy-drama in which young Rhys is forced to come to terms with both his parents splitting up and having to move from Australia to Wales. The world of Marnie, the child protagonist of The Girl From the Estuary by Franco-British director Gaëlle Denis (who won the BAFTA for Best Short Animation with Fish Never Sleep), is instead rife with magic. Denis is the only female director in this year’s FrameWork selection, and her project is visually surprising, with animation, visual effects and lots of colours (the film is being produced by Life to Live Films and co-produced by La Voie Lactée).

Jonas Carpignano has also gone for a teenage protagonist, continuing with his exploration of humanity on the Gioia Tauro plane in Calabria, which he began with his multi-award-winning debut film Mediterranea [+lire aussi :
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interview : Jonas Carpignano
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interview : Jonas Carpignano
fiche film], in the Script&Pitch programme, centres on eleven-year-old Romani gypsy Pio as he struggles with responsibilities beyond his years and pressure from the ‘Ndrangheta; the cast also features Ayiva (Koudous Seihon), the immigrant from Burkina Faso who starred in Mediterranea; filming is set to start next spring (produced by Stayblack Productions). Other Script&Pitch projects presented on the second day of the TFL include Pig by Bulgarian filmmaker Dragomir Sholev (Gorilla Films), the protagonist of which is a thirteen-year-old outsider who is bullied by his classmates; and The Staffroom by Croatian director Sonja Tarokic (being produced by Kinorama), in which a young teacher faces a claustrophobic school system.

Finally there’s the third film project of Burhan Qurbani (Shahada, We Are Young. We Are Strong [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]), a story of friendship and betrayal between a Nigerian refugee and a German drug dealer in Berlin, entitled Berlin Alexanderplatz, like the book by Alfred Döblin on which it is based (Adapt Lab programme; Sommerhaus Filmproduktion), and Look Up, the debut film project of Italian filmmaker Fulvio Risuleo (in the Biennale College – Cinema programme): a road movie across the rooftops of Rome in search of an upper ground between reality and fantasy; filming is set to begin next May (production by Revok). 

Registration for the 2016 edition of Adapt Lab and Story Editing (which provides training for developing screenplays and was made into a programme in itself this year) is now open until 1 December. The deadline for registering for the Audience Design programme is 1 February, whilst you have until 8 February to register for FrameWork.