How does neurodiversity or sensory impairment affect the life of people? Recent global events made many of us familiar with the malfunction of one or two of our beloved 5 senses, and while film has not managed to incorporate smell or taste (yet), efforts have been made to translate a certain haptic perception, most notably by the fellows at the Harvard Sensory Lab. 

The history of film is full of behind-the-scenes stories that made the foreground, making-ofs that became as known or seen as the source artwork. Mo Scarpelli’s documentary El Father Plays Himself flirts with this cinematic legacy yet defies any category the film calls into question.

Odds stories offer sometimes the most natural introduction to lesser-known worlds. This is all the more exciting when such a story is told in a debut feature, like in Marcelo Martinessi’s The Heiresses. 

Many are the metaphors associated with the Greek myth of Medusa, but few refer to Medusa's figure before her transformation. Brazilian director Anita Rocha da Silveira played with Medusa’s “feminist” legacy to frame her film by the same name.

It happens to the best of us: we go on whistling carefree, without asking too many questions, and then something unexpected, often small and apparently meaningless, plunges us into chaos and uncertainty.

This November will mark an important achievement for the TorinoFilmLab: for the first time in 2008 we spotlighted a group of promising directors and their stories.