JEANNE DU BARRY

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PRIMAVERA
Director: Damiano Michieletto
Primavera is a haunting story set in a vividly recreated Venice, a tale of art and music, opportunity and repression. Damiano Michieletto’s drama transports us to the Ospedale della Pietà in the early 1700s, an orphanage where musically gifted girls perform new works as part of a lucrative orchestra. When Antonio Vivaldi is hired, he identifies Cecilia’s clear talent and makes her first violin, but her fate has been long-since foretold. Tecla Insolia plays Cecilia with a tenderness that cuts through time — her predicament reverberating across the ages. While not completely factual, Vivaldi did teach at the Ospedale for 40 years, and the film is based on a literary novel whose core truth resonates here.
IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU
Director: Mary Bronstein
Rose Byrne dominates in Mary Bronstein’s psychologically oppressive and compulsively dark story of a mother firmly on the edge. Both the actress and director take no prisoners as Linda (Byrne) appears in a cacophony of demands on her time as a wife, mother and (a barely functioning) therapist. Her sickly daughter is never seen, only a barrage of requests are heard, compounded by the ceiling that has caved in on her apartment, forcing Linda to move to a motel as her long-distance husband occasionally dials in. And one of her patients has disappeared. While the stress ramps up on screen, there is a catharsis to it all. Watch out for a deft cameo from A$AP Rocky.
NIGHTTIME SOUNDS
Director: Zhang Zhongchen
Nighttime Sounds blends social realism with surrealist poetry to explore the emotional landscapes of women in rural China: their buried desires and muted cries for freedom, love and recognition. Eight-year-old Qing lives with her mother, while her father works in a distant city. One morning, Qing encounters a ghostly child searching for their missing mother. Through dreamlike imagery and a haunting soundscape, director Zhang Zhongchen weaves a powerful tale of memory, longing and the silence passed from one generation of women to the next.
LATE SHIFT
Director: Petra Volpe
Petra Volpe’s salute to caregivers is executed with strength and admiration. Led by a nuanced and meticulous performance from Leonie Benesch, Late Shift is an eloquent plea for compassion, as well as being a gripping story about a day in the life of a hospital worker. Floria (Benesch) is a nurse on an understaffed surgical ward, where she balances the constant demands of her patients — medical and emotional — knowing that every decision she makes (or neglects) could have fatal consequences. Floria, and Volpe’s camera, are constantly on the move to beeping monitors and crash carts in the ward’s confined quarters. As Switzerland’s Oscar submission, Late Shift delivers high drama and a sharp question: who will care for the carers?