At the Edge of the World
Amelia Nanni
Producer
Isabelle Truc
Lab Edition
11
,
2023
Production
IOTA PRODUCTION, Belgium
Country
Belgium, Italy
SYNOPSIS
Nine year old Axelle spends the summer separated from her mother. She is entrusted to her grandparents: the extravagant Paolina and the shy Natale, living in Stiappa. It is said that a curse strikes this tiny Toscan village: every summer one person must die. Axelle, with the help of a small group of children led by Ambra, will do her best to ward off the evil eye of her grandparents. Axelle and Ambra will have to face death for the first time.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
My project here is to adopt a child's point-of-view to tell her first meeting with death. Death is a taboo in our Western societies. We count our dead but we don't know how to prepare mourning and how to deal with it. However, it is only by collectively assuming death that we can really live with it and, above all, take care of the living whatever their age. In this film, I wish to put death back at the heart of life.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Franco-Italian and from the 3rd generation of immigrants, Amelia spent many holidays in Stiappa, a small, isolated village, where she saw her grandparents die. This village is increasingly depopulated, to the point where she knows more dead people than alive. The ruins multiply and urge her to make her first feature film in this place. Amelia is graduated from the University of Paris 7 in cinema, and also has a masters degree in directing from the INSAS (Brussels).
PRODUCER
Isabelle Truc
Created in 2000 in Belgium by Isabelle Truc, Iota Production has produced around fifty documentary films. While maintaining a particular focus on this activity, the company has opened to fiction, animation, and TV series. Most recently, the documentary Hawar, Our Banished Children by Pascale Bourgaux had its world premiere at Visions du Reel 2023. We have also produced 11 shorts and a dozen fiction films, including Our Struggles by Guillaume Senez selected at the Critics' Week of Cannes in 2018 and Oleg by Juris Kursietis, as a co-production, selected at the Cannes Director’s fortnight, 2019. On the animation side, we have participated in the production of Tomm Moore's previous animated feature films, Brendan and the Secret of Kells and The Song of the Sea, nominated for Oscars and Cesars and awarded the prize for best European animated film in 2015.
PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE
Iota production, La hulpe (Belgium) contact email : contact@iotaproduction.com contact telephone number : +32 2 344 65 31
PRODUCTION BUDGET
The production budget in USD : 2.245.820 USD
confirmed budget in USD and source : 824.130 USD (Media development, Belgian Tax Shelter, Belgian cinema center (writing support, artistic development support, production development support).
LANGUAGE
French, Italian
GENRE
Coming of age