Film and Media

'The Second Life' in competition at the Shanghai International Film Festival

Scheduled from 14 to 23 June, the 26th edition of the great Asian festival features the film by Vito Palmieri

by Andrea Chimento

3 June 2024

2' min read

Key points

An intense film with an excellent performance

2' min read

"The Second Life" arrives in Shanghai: Vito Palmieri's film, released in our cinemas on 4 April, will see its international premiere in the context of the Shanghai International Film Festival, where it is the only Italian selected in competition.

Running from 14 to 23 June, the Shanghai International Film Festival is now in its 26th edition and features several Chinese films in the main competition, but also other European features such as the Spanish 'A Bathroom of One's Own' by Lucía Casañ Rodríguez, the German 'Another German Tank Story' by Jannis Alexander Kiefer and the French 'Chasing Johnny' by Baptiste Debraux.

Born in Bitonto in 1978, Vito Palmieri started making short films in 2004 (among these, the 2013 'Matilde', selected at the Berlin Film Festival, is particularly noteworthy) before moving on to feature films with 'See You In Texas' (2016), a debut that was presented and awarded at Shanghai, as well as at other events, including the Biografilm Festival in Bologna.

The short film 'Il Mondiale in Piazza', winner of the MigrArti prize, dates from 2018, but 'La seconda vita' is undoubtedly the most ambitious and significant project that Palmieri has signed so far in his career.

Co-written by the director with Michele Santeramo, author of the novel of the same name that inspired the film, "La seconda vita" tells the story of Anna, a girl with a dark past, who decides to move to a small provincial town. Here, Anna rediscovers and rediscovers the routine of everyday life: she works, walks freely in the streets, meets new people, including Antonio, a sweet and introverted man with whom she begins a shy relationship. But the past seems to leave her no escape because the judgement of others, unlike sentences and convictions, never seems to end.

An intense film with an excellent performance

Already presented at the last edition of the Bifest - Bari International Film Festival, "La seconda vita" is a film that tackles head-on the theme of social reintegration after a prison experience and was made with the involvement of the Dozza - Rocco d'Amato prison in Bologna and the Volterra prison. This allowed the inclusion of people in detention and criminal mediators in the work, and thus in its dissemination, to promote restorative justice as an alternative and complementary vision to support a real and effective social inclusion.

In this heartfelt female portrait, one can deeply grasp the sincerity of intentions and all the commitment in staging a series of not simple topics: not only social reintegration, but also the gaze of others and their judgements, combined with the theme of forgiveness and the possibility of recreating a new existence.

It is curious that the film's stylistic register often verges on the thriller genre, thus managing to engage the viewer even more effectively and incisively until the end.

A further added value is the remarkable performance of Marianna Fontana as the protagonist Anna. The actress, born in 1997, had already shown her talent in 'Indivisibili' by Edoardo De Angelis and in 'Capri-Revolution' by Mario Martone, but in this case she offers an even more convincing performance that probably represents the high point of her still young career.