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Mystery and an air of magic run through Laura Samani’s dark folktale about a young woman in shock after the stillborn death of her first child

Laura Samani’s debut feature is a movie folktale: hard, weathered and knotted, like a piece of driftwood. In north-east Italy at the beginning of the 20th century, a young woman called Agata (Celeste Cescutti) is in shock after the stillborn death of her first child. Her priest tells her that the child is now doomed to wander Limbo in eternity because the baby died before being baptised.

Agata is shown undergoing a folk redemption or healing ceremony on the beach, but for her it is clearly more like her own kind of desolate emotional funeral; yet Agata hears that there is a church somewhere to the north whose priest has the supernatural power to bring a dead child back to life for a single breath,...

Small Body is the tale of a young woman who goes on an epic journey with precious cargo strapped to her back. She encounters highway robbers and non-binary loners, singing fishwives and superstitious coalminers. The precious cargo is the small body of the title, for the heroine, Agata (Celeste Cescutti) has given birth to a stillborn daughter. It is her mission to reach a mythical sanctuary where stillborn babies can miraculously take their first breath and thus be baptized.

The setting is northeast Italy and is filmed in the various dialects and languages of that territory of fluctuating borders. Agata is from a fishing village, at one point declaring: ‘My sister’s hair smells like the sea’. When the story shifts geographically, language changes and interpreters are necessary to progress to her destination. First-time director Laura Samani gives each place a distinctive look, whether it’s the bleached expanses of...

In “Mermaids,” a 2014 three-minute short from Lugano-based Klaudia Reynicke, some conventionally beautiful young women practice hand gestures before an underwater show where they’ll perform as mermaids. Older women cleaners look on.

Cut to the show, with a mermaid swimming across a tank. Then, after a cloud of bubbles, a second mermaid appears, performing underwater cartwheels, who looks like one of the far more fulsomely-bodied cleaners.

Reynicke’s second feature “Love Me Tender” world premiered at Locarno Aug. 9, and segues to Toronto’s Discovery section.

It’s a Swiss movie, produced out of its southern region of Ticino. But Reynicke was born in Peru, spent her early adulthood in Florida – where she retained to shoot “Mermaids” – studied at the New York Tisch School of Arts, has lived for the last eight years in Lugano, Italy.

Is she a rising star of Ticino Swiss filmmaking? Or a member of Peru’s burgeoning film-tv generation?...

Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl wins Queer Lion

Veteran director Marco Bellocchio’s Blood Of My Blood (Sangue Del Mio Sangue) has won the Fipresci Award at the 72nd Venice Film Festival (Sept 2-12).

The film is a vampire-themed period drama starring Alba Rohrwacher, who won last year’s Volpi prize for best actress with her performance in Hungry Hearts, as a 17th-century noblewoman who becomes a nun and seduces a young army officer and his twin brother. The film is sold by The Match Factory.

Venice’s ‘Collateral Awards’ - prizes assigned independently by film critics and cultural associations - also saw the Queer Lion Award go to Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, starring Eddie Redmayne as Danish artist Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of sexual reassignment surgery.

The film, which receives its North American premiere at Toronto tonight (Sept 12), is a hot contender for the upcoming awards season.

Fipresci AwardBest...

Venice Days winners also include As I Open My Eyes, Lolo and Arianna.

Venice Days, the independently run strand of Venice Film Festival, has revealed its winners for 2015, with Michael Rowe’s Early Winter taking the top prize, the Venice Days Award, which comes with a $22,500 (€20,000) prize.

Early Winter, an Australian-Canadian co-production, stars Paul Doucet and Suzanne Clément as a couple in the throes of martrimonial disharmony.

Others winners announced in Venice today include Leyla Bouzid’s As I Open My Eyes (A Peine J’Ouvre Les Yeux), which won the Best European Film award, selected by a jury of European exhibitors, and will now go on to receive promotional support from Europa Cinemas and an EU financial incentive for network cinemas to include it in programming. The film also won the Bnl people’s choice award.

The Fedora prizes, selected by a jury of European film critics headed by Dubravka Lakic, was awarded...

Read More: Venice Days Announces Impressive Lineup, Including International and World Premieres Based on the exclusive trailer for "Arianna," it looks like the diverse Venice Days lineup will be even more exciting than originally thought.  Marking Carlo Lavagna's feature film debut, "Arianna" is a unique Italian-language coming-of-age film that follows the titular Arianna (Ondina Quadri), a 19 year old who becomes obsessed with the conspicuous absence of her period. When she finds herself returning to her childhood summer home after a 16-year absence, Arianna attempts to understand the intricacies of her body and the secrets it hides as she begins to confront the nature of her sexuality and her own identity. "Arianna" will screen in competition this month at Venice Days along with 20 other selected features, with its world premiere on September 4. Watch the Nsfw trailer above.   Read More: Venice Film Festival's Sala Web to Return with More...