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In Roberto Minervini: Gonna Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In, viewers will encounter an often underrepresented side of the United States. From the moment he began making movies, Minervini was able to work creatively with the limits of non-fiction. His filmmaking style, a balance between fiction and documentary, came into full fruition with the films Low Tide and Stop the Pounding Heart. Following success at a number of documentary film festivals, Minervini received huge acclaim and controversy for his next work, The Other Side, about a drug-addicted couple in Louisiana. The film’s perverse view of romance between two people rejected by polite society resonated with viewers at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened in Un Certain Regard.
Minervini’s most recent film is the Venice winner What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?, from 2018, a close-up account of a Black community living in the Deep American South – and a resurgent Black Panther Party there. His sixth feature-length film is currently in pre-production.
Live discussion on 19 May
Roberto Minervini achieves a great sense of intimacy in his films, working with small film crews, an absence of artificial lighting, and a deep level of trust built with those people whose stories he collaborates on. During an exclusive live stream moderated by the Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival, Giona Nazzaro, Minervini will discuss his own personal approach to filmmaking and the aspects of his exacting work in bringing often alien social worlds to the screen. The discussion — which is presented as part of the DAFilms Conversations series in which the viewers themselves are encouraged to ask questions — will take place online on Wednesday, 19 May from 7pm on Facebook and on DAFilms Live.
A camera like a window to the soul
All in all, Roberto Minervini – a foreigner who nonetheless made all his films in America – became a perceptive observer of life in Middle America, capturing it all on camera with a distinctly intense visual style made up of both long takes and closeups of startling breadth and intimacy.
“We’ve been following Roberto Minervini’s work for many years and have grown fascinated with the ease in which he portrays the overwhelming lives of his main characters. We are thrilled to finally be able to showcase his work to DAFilms viewers in such a comprehensive way as well as put together a discussion with this talented filmmaker, whose work we’ll certainly continue to hear about in the future,” says Diana Tabakov, Executive Director and Curator at DAFilms.
About DAFilms
The online portal DAFilms.com is the main project of the Doc Alliance festival network formed by 7 key European documentary film festivals: CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, Millennium Docs Against Gravity FF, DOK Leipzig, FIDMarseille, Ji.hlava IDFF and Visions du Réel. It represents an international online distribution platform for documentary and experimental films focused on European cinema. For a small fee, it offers over 1900 films accessible across the globe for streaming or legal download. The films are included in the virtual database on the basis of demanding selection criteria. The portal presents regular film programs of diverse character ranging from presentation of archive historical films through world retrospectives of leading world filmmakers to new premiere formats such as the day-and-date release. DAFilms.com invites directors, producers, distributors, and students to submit their films, thus offering them the possibility to make use of this unique distribution channel.
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