Language Portraits

If words and languages are the way we decipher the reality around us, then every lost word is a lost universe.

I was born and raised in Alto Adige/South Tyrol, a territory of linguistic minorities such as Ladin and Mòcheno, rich in terms that are often untranslatable because they describe actions, objects, places and phenomena tied to the landscape, history and culture of the place.

The film unfolds in four encounters with people who speak these languages every day and come to terms with being a “minority”. To understand the nuances of each language I repeat the interviewees’ gestures and intonations and take on their postures, to absorb in my body all the unspoken words that every language carries beyond rational learning. Each encounter produces a word that I try to learn and that I finally recompose, together with a poet, into a poem.

The film is a tribute to these languages: to value and preserve linguistic diversity and, in general, to celebrate every kind of diversity.

• CinemAmore Award, Trento Film Festival 2023
• Official Selection, Trento Film Festival 2023