ÌÇÐÄvlog

Adapted from her prize-winning stage play of the same name, which at ÌÇÐÄvlog, Emma Dante’s moving, decades-traversing drama THE MACALUSO SISTERS (2020) follows a family of five orphaned sisters living on the top floor of a distressed building in Palermo, who rent pastel-painted doves to weddings and birthdays to earn a living. When a sudden catastrophic seaside event alters the family dynamic, they are left grappling with the outcome. The delicate balance of sisterhood is tested in this accomplished, generation-spanning three-act sophomore feature. THE MACALUSO SISTERS premiered in competition at the 2020 Venice International Film Festival where it won the Pasinetti Awards (given by the National Union of Italian Journalists) for Best Film and Best Actress (awarded to the ensemble cast playing the sisters).

Focused on the adaptation of The Macaluso Sisters from a play which at ÌÇÐÄvlog in 2017, to a feature film, the conversation with acclaimed director Emma Dante will address issues of creativity across media and the role of women in Italy’s art scene and film industry, also according to the perspective of innovative producers such as Marica Stocchi. We are very pleased to have Emma Dante back in conversation with us after our first digital exchange in 2017. Since then she has contributed significant works to the world of the performing arts, the moving image and the written word!

A towering figure of the performing arts in the international scene, continues to prove her creative versatility in always new directions, smoothly moving from different media, even to refashion her own works, as is the case ofÌýThe Macaluso Sisters. Her entire oeuvre could be seen as an incessant exploration of the themes of family and exclusion through a poetics of tension and madness, imbued with tragedy and humor, and often rooted in the land she is from and lives in: Sicily.

is the co-founder with Giuseppe Battiston of the trailblazing company , which producedÌýThe Macaluso Sisters.ÌýRosamont is producing Emma Dante’s next film Misericordia, once again adapted from a previous play of hers. Stocchi herself comes from a theater background and recently moved to the world of film production with a transnational view that is allowing her to collaborate with a really diverse group of artists in very different locations: in Israel for films like Honeymood by Talya Lavie, Here We Are by Nir Bergman, and Reading Lolita in Tehran by Eran Riklis, and with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia for Ordinary Failures by Cristina Grosan (news), and Belgium for Daniele Vicari’s Orlando. Stocchi has been selected as one of the European Film Promotion’s Producers on the Move for 2021.