Zombie, screenplayed as a special event to close the 35th International Film Critics' Week in the SIC@SIC -­‐ Italian Short Cinema section, was made at the end ofGiorgio Diritti's screenwriting and directing course "Dall'idea al set” held throughout 2019 for Marco Bellocchio’s Fondazione Fare Cinema foundation in Bobbio. This short film was created through a workgroup, at the same time in a personal and introspective manner, with the attendees of the course, on the topic of parent-child relationships.

SYNOPSIS

It is Halloween. Camilla is standing outside her school. She looks around for her father, but sees her mother, Paola, waiting for her instead. She takes the little girl to the bakery and tells her to get whatever she wants: today is a special day.

Back home, Paola dresses her daughter up as a zombie. The eagerly awaited time for trick or treating has arrived.

A hood with two holes for the eyes covers Camilla's face. She walks through the streets of the town, hand in hand with her mother – who has a different plan, however...

with

ELENA ARVIGO

GRETA BUTTAFAVA

SARA DHO

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

"During the course in Bobbio, we tried to stimulate the participants to talk about their personal experiences, to feel what their 'urgent needs' were. This led to the creation of some subjects which expressed the difficulties, the emotional trauma and suffering of marital separation from the children's point of view.

This is where the idea to make Zombie came from, because it distils the contradictions of a festival which is very exciting for children (Halloween) with the conflictual distortions and loneliness of parents who, in their inability to distinguish their roles, all turn somewhat into the 'living dead'. If this split, rather than possible separation, turns into a destructive break-up, the children become unknowing, and in some cases instrumental, victims of these conflicts, risking parental alienation.

It is a reflection on these childhood traumas which will remain over time and which the children certainly do not deserve."

Giorgio Diritti