BLISS

19’

A documentary by Irene Felici produced by Natia Docufilm.

“Joanna, a woman with a cancer, decides to open a beauty salon for women who, like her, are suffering and who are able to recover an outward beauty, a reflection of the interior beauty, only apparently lost.”

The idea of representing the disease with the close up technique, it's a way to reveal a condition of positivity, always present despite the difficulty. The eyes of the women of Szczecin tell a greater attention to the life, from observers, less distracted and careless, thanks to their condition. It's as if an enrichment is generated by an absence. The attention to life of those who suffer is great compared to the carelessness of "observers" who are distracted daily and is thanks to the close up that I, as a spectator, can understand this attitude.

Similarly, who look at a close- up do this without any distraction: the narrow framing focuses the attention, directions and selects it.

Although it is not possible to observe the Polish context- only the one around the salon- the spectator can perceive it. The decision to create a documentary without long fields comes from wanting to ensure that this context is palpable through the face: the look becomes a source of contextualization.

We wanted to cross this "lack" during the entire course of the film, in order to create a sort of reconciliation with the common life, already implemented by women but to be implemented within the film. For this reason we have chosen to concentrate everything within a single place and make the spectator feel another type of lack that has been tried at the same time to fill: the only apparent absence of a normal life and the normalization of a condition atypical for us.

It is a closeness between director and protagonist that is created thanks to the choice of the close up. I am also part of the film, in a reflection inside the eyes of these women.

AWARDS

Benton Park Film Festival 2019
Best documentary short

SELECTIONS

Roma Cinema DOC
Italian Documentary

Inshort Film Festival 2019
Documentary

First-Time Filmmaker Session
Short Documentary

Slemani International Film Festival
International Documentary Film