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Opening Night will begin at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, at the Ravenna Palazzo del Cinema e dei Congressi on Largo Firenze 1 Street.
It will be a festive opening night, with free admission, open to the entire city, to all spectators, faithful and casual. This year we will open the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Ravenna Nightmare Film Fest together, with a gift designed to thank our audience: cake and sparkling wine for all and everyone, followed by a free screening of one of the most special films of the prestigious Contemporary section.
LAMB by Valdimar Jóhannsson
Don't miss the opportunity to celebrate the 20th anniversary
We recommend reserving your place by emailing info@ravennanightmare.it
Lamb _ Debut by the Icelandic director who won the originality award at Cannes. A visual experience that bewilders and amazes, once we accept to suspend the cynical disbelief that distinguishes us.
LAMB by Valdimar Jóhannsson
Iceland/Sweden/Poland | 2021 | 106'
A perturbing visual poem, inspired by Nordic folk legends
María and Ingvar, sheep farmers, discover a mysterious newborn creature on their farm in Iceland. This unexpected turn of events brings them much joy, and is only the beginning of their troubles. A perturbing visual poem, inspired by Nordic folk legends, about the inscrutable and uncontrollable forces of nature.
20 YEARS LATER: THE METAMORPHOSIS
The transformation of the festival, which began out of necessity toward the end of last decade, ended up becoming our strong point. In 2003, the year of its founding, there were very few genre film festivals of national significance. It was therefore quite easy to find our own specificity: we found it in horror cinema. For many years this specificity was recognized, and it was gratifying: it was relatively easy for us to build a program of national relevance, offering, to our viewers and the press, the best horror works around. Then something happened that was, perhaps, predictable, but crippling for us. Following the international success of the new wave of Japanese and other horror films, the major genre film festivals, in addition to programming films in line with their original vocation (noir, detective story and science fiction in particular), began to give more and more space to horror cinema, often taking away valuable "pieces" from us. Those who organize a festival know that it is impossible to find a large number of excellent films (of whatever genre) every year. Therefore, when we found ourselves "contending" for a film or a guest at festivals with strong potential (also because the said festivals had invaded our field as well), in order to avoid lowering the quality of our product, we opted for the most natural solution.
Through a work of inclusion, which, however, did not distort the basic idea from which our festival was born, we broadened the selection to include neighboring genres, such as noir, crime, thriller, science fiction, thus in the direction of enhancing the dark side of cinema. It was an electrocution. The dark side of cinema (and television, of course) is where the most interesting and innovative works have been encountered for years and increasingly so; we anticipated this wind of change. The boundary between the action of a genre director who introduces strongly authorial instances in his works and the practice of a director-author who uses the codes of the genre to reach other limelight has thinned so much that it has become imperceptible: the dark side, of cinema and television, and also of living, has found, within our festival, full right of citizenship, and so it will be for years to come.
Franco Calandrini
Artistic Director
