The San Diego Italian Film Festival Presents: Selfie

Directed by Agostino Ferrente | 76 minutes

Several years after an unarmed teenager was shot by police in the Traiano neighborhood of Naples, filmmaker Agostino Ferrente traveled to the gang-ravaged neighborhood to make a documentary about the lives of its young people—for whom the prospect of being swept up in Camorra activity perpetually looms. The film’s central subjects are Alessandro and Pietro, 16-year-old best friends whom Ferrente recruited to film themselves using smartphones in “selfie” mode as they go about their daily lives. The result is at once lyrical and raw, a deceptively offhand, richly moving chronicle of adolescent friendship in a social microcosm shaped by economic precarity, conflicting moralities, and the improbable persistence of hope.

Attendees will also enjoy a screening of two short films: Shine (15 minutes) by Rhett Bradbury and Beauty (25 minutes) by Nicola Abbatangelo. These shorts are two of the twenty finalists of our new Short Film Competition.