The variety of the lineup for the 18th edition of Giornate degli Autori makes it a cross-section of the world, cutting across national borders. We can zoom in and find ourselves in an area (more cultural than geographical) that speaks Spanish and Portuguese, where Ibero-American visions prevail, and stories about countries may be physically poles apart, yet share vibrations, above and beyond their languages.

These are films that obey the first basic rule of storytelling, according to which characters grapple with some kind of shocking condition that forces them to change direction. In that search for identity that regards us all, in our lives, the protagonists of these stories seek to escape from an event that has changed the course of their existences, taking the opposite direction, in order to find themselves.

Among these characters, we come across the violent cop whom we sense must have been suspended for doing something terrible (Private Desert, Brazil), and a talented sound designer who knows something is wrong with her hearing - it's no longer in sync with reality (Out of Sync, Spain). Then there's a couple that has suffered the worst loss imaginable and now finds itself in a new dimension, painful, yet still (Dusk Stone, Argentina).

"We're all impatient to discover the new Pedro Almodóvar in the running at the festival," says Gaia Furrer, Artistic Director of Giornate degli Autori, "and to see the film directed by two Argentines, Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, which, thanks to a stellar cast, seems to be an intriguing meditation on the film world. For our part, we're delighted to be able to offer a reverse angle with stories by independent directors and potent films. The sensory dimension is amplified in the Spanish film Out of Sync, with an extraordinary Marta Nieto dealing with sounds out of sync inside her own head. The Argentinian Dusk Stone is about the lull after a storm, a tragedy that conveys all the fragility of our existence while pondering ecology by taking its cue from the film's locations, lead characters as much as the actors are. Then there's love, an unfulfilled desire, and an identity denied in the Brazilian film, a queer melodrama and a universal tale of marginalization. We have a dream: that these filmmakers will go far and maybe match the stunning success of Guatemala's Jayro Bustamante, who presented his The Weeping Woman at Giornate 2019, and a few months later we saw him seated at the Oscars® gala event."

After earlier success stories at Giornate, such as Daniel Sánchez Arévalo (Dark Blue Almost Black, 2006; Fat People, 2009) and Daniel Monzón (the 2011 film Cell 211, co-written with Jorge Guerricaechevarría), Spanish cinema is back this year with its Out of Sync in competition. The second film by Catalan director Juanjo Giménez, whose short Timecode (2016) reached the Oscars® and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, it is a film about sound without music. It examines the relationship between reality and the supernatural, foregoing special effects to describe the latter dimension and relying on the world of sound exclusively, as well as a star turn by Marta Nieto (Volpi Cup at Venice 2019 for Rodrigo Sorogoyen's Mother).

Dusk Stone (Argentina, in competition) is a painful story told with restraint, straddling magic and ecology. Its director is Iván Fund: Today I Felt No Fear (2011), I Got Lost a Week Ago (2012), and Soft Rains Will Come (2018). Dusk Stone is about a grieving couple reconnecting after the death of their son - and also a sea monster. The cast features Alfredo Castro, who starred in last year's Chilean film My Tender Matador by Rodrigo Sepúlveda, on the competition lineup at Giornate.

And thanks to a documentary being showcased at Venetian Nights, we travel to Argentina as well. This Swiss film directed by Stefano Knuchel looks at a chapter in the life of the great Italian graphic artist who invented Corto Maltese. Hugo Pratt was born in Rimini but had a Venetian spirit and mixed ancestry - a Turkish grandmother, one Anglo-French grandfather, and the other a Sephardic Jew from Spain. Pratt lived in that large country of endless promise, Argentina in the late 1940s, and worked with publishing houses, becoming acquainted with major comic book artists as well as ordinary people who recall him in this documentary called Hugo in Argentina.

Private Desert by Aly Muritiba is the Brazilian entry in competition. It has all the passion of a hot-blooded country, passion that takes the form of melodrama: a LGBTQ+ film depicting the underlying violence and intolerance of Brazil today as characters attempt to find their own identity while each one's identity is rejected by society. "After the election of Jair Bolsonaro," the director declares, "all minorities, women, indigenous people, LGBTQI+ community, and blacks, among others, began to be systematically persecuted and the country was divided between the conservative south and the progressive north / northeast. There were many times when we were on the brink of armed confrontation. And these times of hate motivated me when it came to deciding what my next film would be. I decided that I would make a film about an encounter. In these hateful times, I decided to make a movie about love."

Last but not least, there's a face: that of the Spanish actor Quim Gutiérrez. He made a precocious debut in TV series, then went on to the big screen, winning a Goya award in 2006 for his role as best actor to watch in Dark Blue Almost Black, which premiered at Giornate that same year. Another hit film he appeared in, Three Many Weddings by Javier Ruiz Caldera, also bowed at Giornate, in 2013. Well known in Spain for other films by Daniel Daniel Sánchez Arévalo (Cousinhood, 2011; Family United, 2012) and for Advantages of Travelling by Train by Aritz Moreno (2019), Quim Gutiérrez went to France to star alongside Emmanuelle Béart in the 2014 French film The Yellow Eyes of the Crocodiles. Now he's back at Giornate starring in another French film, this time with Virginie Efira: Madeleine Collins by Antoine Barraud, in competition. It's a Hitchcockian story, full of suspense, about double lives.