Visual Encounters - day 3
10.25-10.50 Film projection
10.50-11.05 Q&A with the Filmmaker
"Bravo" by Jaap Speelman, 25'
Nestled among the dusty mountains of the southern Spanish desert lies Fort Bravo, an old film set where spaghetti westerns were once shot. Today, cowboys still ride horses around, performing daily for tourists in a spectacle full of gunshots, stunts, galloping horses, and humor. In this world, we meet cowboy Ricardo. The film follows Ricardo during his daily life on the set of Fort Bravo, where he plays the role of bandit or sheriff with visible pleasure and dedication. For Ricardo, playing a cowboy is not just a job, but also a form of expression in which he can express his love for theater, action, and spectacle. For him, the cowboy life is more than just dressing up; it is an attitude to life in which play, show, and identity come together.
The film focuses on Ricardo's love for the genre, for the horses, the clothing, and the spectacle. He explains where this passion comes from and describes the ultimate cowboy. Between the action, an intimate portrait emerges of someone who lives in the echo of a myth. The Western comes from Hollywood, but Ricardo makes it his own: a daily ritual in which fiction and reality merge.
This film is an encounter with someone who lives in a dream that has become reality. Bravo is an ode to the game, on the border between reality and imagination. And to a man who brings the Wild West to life every day with passion, charm and a big smile.
11.10-12.10 Film projections
12.10-12.25 Q&A with the Filmmakers
"Through the Grapevine" by Elia Smarius, 28'
The wine industry has been in rough waters in the last few years. Wine sales are plummeting and climate change makes it increasingly more challenging to cultivate vineyards in many regions all over the world. Or at least, that is what the news headlines say. What do these developments look like up close? Are they as consequential as they seem? Are winemakers who have to mitigate and adapt every year just as alarmed as those news outlets are?
In Through the Grapevine, we meet four winemakers - Matteo, Francesco, Katia and Lorenzo. Matteo works for the largest winery with over 8 million bottles per year. Francesco is the owner and winemaker of the smallest winery in Montalcino, with only 7000 bottles annually. Katia and Lorenzo are medium-small producers with 100.000 and 40.000 bottles respectively. Although all four of them make wine in the renowned Montalcino region in southern Tuscany, each one of them has a different philosophy and practices winemaking in their own particular way. The film focuses on their passion and love for their work and how they are adapting to a changing environment.
"Vie Crealla" by Leonardo Luca Sammito, 26'
Crealla is an Italian village that lies on the Prealps before the Swiss border and is connected by carriageable road only since 2004. The film Vie Crealla embeds the village, its inhabitants, and its road within the mountainous ragged landscape surrounding it. From wide-open faces of the mountains to the lowest valleys, where old rivers endlessly erode deeper beds Vie Crealla is an audio-visual wonder across a space where the social tissues of Crealla
resonate to the same sound the air does. Led by the Crealla’s bells’ chime, the images of a mountain disappearing in a colourless mist, a traditional women’s skirt melting into a mountain chain, and a moon moving away from itself, time and space dimensions are sublimated. Through a layered expression of how life in Crealla can be understood at the sacral edge between perception and understanding, the viewers are allowed to embody the experience of the field and be incarnated within the landscapes of crealla and everything within them.
Combined
In Through the Grapevine, set in Montalcino, Tuscany, we meet four winemakers—Matteo, Francesco, Katia, and Lorenzo. The film explores how each personally relates their work to a rapidly changing environment. Though all four make wine in the same region, each follows a unique philosophy and approach to winemaking.
Vie Crealla, set in Crealla, a mountainous village near Italy’s northern border, is sparked by the arrival of the first carriageable road in 2004. It is an audio-visual wonder through a space where the social tissues resonate to the sounds of its rugged landscape.
By foregrounding work and daily life, both films reflect on the human-space relationship, offering melancholic and hopeful feelings on the perception of time.
12.30-13.55 Film projections
13.55-14.10 Q&A with the Filmmakers
"Switi Gowtu" by Daniella Dorenbos, 35'
Suriname’s gold is an important export product. How sweet are the social side-effects of this luxury metal? Switi Gowtu invites you on a journey through the country's gold mines and its workers. The film also explores the perspective of environmental activists and how traditional and modern politics affect the industry.
"Lefkanthia: The traces of sacrifice" by Evita Belegri, 50'
Lefkanthia are white lilies that grow on the coast of Amani, a region of 500 people in Northern Chios, Greece. The flower is vulnerable to environmental changes but yet durable since its roots grow deep inside rocks and sand to draw water. Leukanthia: The Signs of Sacrifice, through using the local religious myth of Saint Markella, discusses the contemporary issues in Amani. As the area has endured neglect from the state for decades and now faces the possibility of an environmentally destructive antimony mine, the film aspires to explore the possibility of agency and resistance in a seemingly futile situation. The filmmaker navigates these complex dynamics in the region by using the tragic myth of Saint Markella: a local story of a young girl who was desired and murdered by her own father. Through the use of landscape and appealing affect and emotion, Belegri questions: What does one do when they are considered ‘already dead’?
Combined
These two films explore how people and places are affected by mining and environmental change. Switi Gowtu takes us to the gold mines of Suriname, showing the lives of workers, the role of politics, and the views of environmental activists. It asks what the true cost of gold is for the country and its people. Lefkanthia: The Traces of Sacrifice is set in a small village in Northern Chios, Greece, where a white lily and a local myth help tell the story of a community facing the threat of a new mine amidst long-standing state neglect. Together, these films show different ways communities respond to environmental and political challenges.
14.15-15.35 Film projections
15.35-15.50 Q&A with the Filmmakers
"Digital Nomads and other Fortune Seekers" by Emma Paagman, 35'
This film follows three so called “digital nomads” who have landed on the island of Madeira—one digging into family roots, one leaving behind a dead-end hometown, and one simply seeking new experiences. But while they move freely in search of something more, they do this in a world where others face locked borders and uncertainty. The film explores the blurry line between following your dreams and escaping your life—and asks: where is the fortune of fortune seekers located: on a tropical island? Or in one’s head?
"Performing Freedom" by Mathanja van Houwelingen, 45'
Performing Freedom follows Dutch entrepreneurs Nadia Duinker and Thijs Timmers, who move to rural Portugal after the pandemic to build an alternative community called Freedomville. They dream of creating a place for freedom, healing, and regeneration, a village where people can live closer to nature and outside the system.
But as Freedomville grows, tensions arise. What does it mean to buy and rebuild a village in a poor, depopulating region? How do the local Portuguese see this new Dutch community turning farmland into an eco-resort?
Through intimate and observational scenes, from community meetings and yoga sessions to construction work and local cafés, Performing Freedom explores whether true freedom can exist once you start building your own world. The film asks where idealism ends and new forms of privilege and power begin.
Combined
From the tropical landscapes of Madeira to the rural hills of Portugal, these two films trace contemporary quests for freedom and belonging in a globalised world. In Digital Nomads and Other Fortune Seekers, three travelers chase new beginnings on an island marketed as paradise. They all seek purpose, escape, or connection in a place shaped by unequal mobility. Performing Freedom follows Dutch entrepreneurs building “Freedomville,” a self-styled utopia of healing and regeneration that soon exposes the contradictions between idealism and privilege. Together, the films reveal the complex entanglements of aspiration and displacement, asking what it truly means to live freely when freedom itself has become a commodity.
