Five short films about the ongoing global health crisis and the solitude, grief, and fear it engendered, along with the surprise of finding ourselves in a whole new world, completely different from the one we knew just before the Covid-19 pandemic. These few lines could serve as the synopsis for Isolation, the portmanteau film co-directed by five filmmakers - Michele Placido, Julia von Heinz, Olivier Guerpillon, Jaco Van Dormael, and Michael Winterbottom, each providing their personal take on the pandemic, in line with their individual sensibilities and approaches.

With its world premiere held at the Teatro Goldoni, Isolation was screened as part of the Venetian Nights program and given the specific "role" of representing inclusion in cinema (a recurring theme of Isola Edipo's year-long activities). The film was ushered in by a dialogue held at the Sala Laguna, with four out of five of its directors on hand (Michele Placido was unable to attend due to other commitments), as well as moderator Adrian Wootton. The talk was a golden opportunity to go behind the scenes for insight into this project, a behind-the-scenes itself. In fact, the filmmakers each came up with their own short by drawing on their own inner resources, their lives and feelings at a time when it was difficult to even conceive of a world beyond one's own four walls.

Naturally enough, the directors' comments during the talk shed light how different the five shorts tackling this theme were. For instance, while Julia von Heinz and Jaco Van Dormael dwelt on the illness and a death in the family, of a father and father-in-law, respectively, in what were autobiographical narratives, Olivier Guerpillon and Michael Winterbottom's shorts examined the political and social situation that Covid-19 produced in Sweden and England with a critical eye. As a matter of fact, the latter two directors chose to highlight how the lockdown accentuated and radicalized a sense of alienation that was alive and well even before the virus appeared on the scene.

A life reimagined in a story, and the story itself that points that life in a new, unexpected direction: this was the case for Julia von Heinz, who made a discovery as she looked through her late father's letters, photos and videos - he had always hidden from her the fact that he was homosexual. Her film, therefore, would capture a man's "other life", so recent, yet so secret to her. And a story whose evolutions turn reality on its head and "rewrite" a past that, undaunted, continually changes shape as it becomes present and future.

That's cinema for you: even when it depicts isolation, it is necessarily inclusive, since it creates relationships. To name one, the woman who receives her work permit, as happens in the short by Michael Winterbottom.