SYDNEY SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL SECURES AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE OF VERA DE VERDAD
The Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival has announced Beniamino Catena’s strikingly original fantasy-drama Vera De Verdad as the first official selection of its 2021 program.
A richly complex, soulful exploration of mortality, transference and reincarnation, Catena’s breathtakingly beautiful debut feature recounts the intertwined lives of ‘Vera’, a nine year-old Italian girl who mysteriously vanishes, and ‘Elias’, a middle-aged Chilean man, working in the Atacama desert. The pair form a bond across time and space, in an unpredictable and mysterious unison; when the girl reappears as a 25 year-old woman, she is consumed with memories not her own.
The Chilean-Italian co-production will have its Australian Premiere in Sydney as part of The Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival’s second edition, to be held at the Actors Centre Australia from November 4-13.
“No film in recent memory has so deeply affected me upon first viewing and it is a privilege to be able to bring Beniamo’s thrilling, moving vision to Australian audiences,” said Festival Director Simon Foster. “I was determined to secure Vera De Verdad for the 2021 line-up because it represents the kind of thoughtful, emotional, bracingly unique science-fiction/fantasy narrative that is rarely seen by Australian audiences.”
Starring Marta Gastini as the older ‘Vera’ and Marcelo Alonso as ‘Elias’, the film had its World Premiere at the 2020 Torino Film Festival and screened recently at the 2021 Trieste Film Festival and the 2021 Brussels International Fantasy Film Festival.
Vera De Verdad is produced by Simone Gandolfo and Manuel Stefanolo for Italy’s Macaia Film and Karina Jury for Chile’s Atomica. The story is by Catena and Graziano Misuraca, and the screenplay was written by Paola Mammini and Nicoletta Polledro. The festival placement was handled by Rome-based sales company Coccinelle Film Sales.
The next wave of official 2021 Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival selections will be announced on June 7. Ticket packages are currently on sale via the festival’s FilmFreeway site.