The Festival of the land !

StranoFilmFestival is an international film festival with the theme of "the land" which has been held since 2017 in Capestrano, Valle del Tirino (AQ). The Festival is renewed and from 2022 will be held every two years. The Festival stays open to all cultural expressions while always remaining faithful to the link with the territory and its inhabitants.

Strano builds bridges between places and people far away in space and time, imagining possible future worlds.

We investigate experimental and unique practices for: agriculture, environment and migration. Strano Film Festival aims to stimulate creative and unconventional ways of experiencing the land while intertwining tradition and innovation. 

2022 EDITION: YOU ARE THE FUTURE ANCESTOR

We stopped 2 years because of the pandemic. This involuntary pause gave us time to think and renew ourselves to return full of energy. The symbol of this rebirth are the “mammocci”, King Nevio Pompuledio and his family, who came out of the land that had hidden them for millennia. These treasures of an ancient world are for us the starting point for imagining the future of the Valley.

2022 On the screen

During the festival, documentaries, animations, fictions and experimental films from all over the world will explore new realities for three evenings. They share an impulse to embrace and care for the delicate balance between nature and tradition. The selection process privileged stories of those who have left the land, returned, and also those who sometimes remained and made changes. The two winners of the public vote are 73 COWS by Alex Lockwood and IN A NUTSHELL by Fabio Friedli

2022 In the Valley

The mammocci - that’s how we like to call the group of statues found together with the Capestrano Warrior - are our main inspiration. The three days of the festival will involve a journey through time, beginning with the Augmented Reality Land project, dedicated to the archaeological landscape of the Tirino Valley. We bring a group of now dismembered statues, situated in different places on the planet, back into their original context. We will make menhirs — the basis of the funeral tradition that originated the anthropomorphic statues of King Nevio and the Dama — reappear in the Valley. 

These statues tell us about a life extremely different from ours. Though hosted on these same lands in the Abbruzzese fields, there were no tomatoes, potatoes and saffron and it was normal to live during war. Potatoes and Warriors  starts from this reflection and proposes an original archaeological excavation experience as the farmers digging the lands were the first unwitting archaeologists of the Valley. 

The Mammocci have given us an ancient message, and now we prepare and leave our message for those who will come. In the Time Capsule Project Strano asks everyone this question: If we could send messages to those who will come after us, what would they be? 

The answers to this question from the festival-goers and Capestranesi have been collected in a time capsule, testimonies they want to send to the future. The time capsule sealed on the last night of the Festival will be reopened in 100 years. Strano thanks the Municipality of Capestrano and the Pro Loco for their collaboration in this project so closely linked to the community that makes the Tirino Valley vital.

We tasted wine as it was made more than two thousand years ago in the Valley and we will spend time observing this world and putting our impressions on paper. The heartbeat has been the soundtrack of a performance that made the stones of ancient buildings vibrate. We walked the streets of the village and listen to who told us their incredible and varied stories of those  who today in Capestrano, as well as those who lived here thousands of years ago.

We are the ancestors of the future.

This year we have also renewed the creative team. Helping me in the organisation and artistic production of Strano are Milanese director MariaGiovanna Cicciari, choreographer Elisabetta Consonni, organizer Giada Gagliardi, architect Andrea Rosicarelli of PUNTO Studio, producer Katya Panova, and performer Kevin Skelton. We have all worked to create short circuits [excursions?] that open unknown imaginaries. We all want Strano to gather [and strengthen] a community open to transformation and capable of founding new traditions.

The festival take place in Capestrano (AQ), a medieval hilltop Italian town.

Image Gianluca Abbate, archive Cipolla