In collaboration with Festival del Cine Espanol and distributor Exit Media, Ravenna Nightmare presents as one of section Contemporanea's titles, the award-winning Most Beautiful Island by Ana Asensio, actress and director of the film, who will be attending the Festival's XVI edition.
Most Beautiful Island is a disenchanted and ironic title. Asensio, the director, underlines in the screenplay many of her fears and anxieties lived fand suffered firsthand when she was an immigrant in a not-so-welcoming country. In the film she turned them into a thriller following the protagonist in her attempts not only to survive, but also to escape to her own ghosts.
Given the circumstances, Luciana accepts every kind of job offer she receivs, also the ones she never thought she would be able to do, with the sole purpose of living (or surviving) in the Big Apple. One day she receivs an economic offer she cannot decline: going to a very exclusive party and simply "play the game" of the guests. Luciana accepts it and follows all the instructions, but the party leads her to a mysterious room. And so a nightmare beyond belief begins.
In the film there are traces of Polanski and Kubrick, clautrophoby's masters, suffocating atmospheres and inexctricable conflicts.
Shot in 16mm, with an agile camera, few resources but a lot of audacity, Asensio, mainly in the second part of the film, knows exactly how to properly use different elements: sound, what she leaves out of the camera's sight, little info she reveals, so that viewers can complete the story with their own nightmares.
Winner of Special Jury Award at SXSW 2017 in Austin (USA), with her first film Ana Asensio makes an impression with an upsetting, to say the least, work that is also a sociopolitical statement on exploitation of the weak: Most Beautiful Island is without any doubt one of the most significant titles of the indipendent international circuit of the last season.
Ana Asensio is an actress, writer, director, and producer from Madrid, Spain now based in Brooklyn, NY.
Asensio wrote, directed, produced and played the lead role on the feature film MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW 2017 and was acquired for distribution by Orion and Samuel Goldwyn Films. The film is nominated for the John Cassettes Spirit Award 2018.
As an actress, Asensio appeared on several tv series in Spain and independent films in USA.
Asensio’s theater directing and producing credits include works in both Spanish and English that have been performed at prestigious theaters in: Spain, Africa, Estonia, Cuba and New York. Asensio has produced/performed three one-woman shows that have toured the world, receiving great reviews and awards.
As a theater writer, she adapted the bestselling Spanish novel, La Piel de Mica into an English language one-woman show in which she stars titled, Mica’s Skin that received the award for “Best Adaptation” at the United Solo Festival in NYC; Mica’s Skin has also been published by NY Indie Theater Now.
