Born on a vast farmstead in Kenya to a former Italian cavalry officer and a student of Rodin, lovers who abandoned their marriages to create a new life, Mirella Ricciardi grew up steeped in the contradictions and reckless optimism of empire. Ricciardi captured her world, photographing East African communities in what would become the iconic Vanishing Africa, and became famous overnight. Celebrated for its intimacy and craft, the work also bears the imprint of the colonial gaze, its aesthetics of disappearance raising ambiguities around authorship, representation, and power.
A striking figure both in front of and behind the camera, she found herself in the artistic elite of 1960s Rome, where she was admired, photographed, and often exoticized her colonial origins and arresting beauty fuelling a fascination that was not entirely her own. She even played herself in Antonioni's L'Eclisse, embodying a version of herself shaped as much by others' gaze as by her own. Now in her nineties, Ricciardi chooses not to have her face filmed. Her presence lingers only through her voice and the images she allows, as she attempts to guide director Oliver Bruck with an elusive but forceful hand. The result is a portrait defined as much by absence as appearance.
MIRELLA is a meditation on power, beauty, and loss. At its core lies a woman who, in her life, negotiates the tension between authorship, visibility, and erasure, shaped by a colonial world she once embodied but that no longer exists.
National and World Premiere open
SEPTEMBER 2025
DREI KILOMETER BIS ZUM ENDE DER WELT
ein Film von Emanuel Pârvu
Ausgezeichnet mit der QUEEREN PALME in Cannes 2025
Rumänien 2024, 105 Minuten, rumänische Originalfassung mit deutschen Untertiteln
FSK 12
Mi, 10.9. 20:40 KIZ Royal Kino
Do 11.9., 20.30 Cinema Paradiso, Baden
Mo 17.9. 20.00 Votivkino, Wien
Do 18.9., 20.15 Volkskino Klagenfurt
Mo 29.9. 20:30 Cinematograph
ALARM ab 26. September auf VOD
Jetzt im Gemeindekino eine Vorstellung buchen
www.gemeindekino.at
ein Film von Nathalie Borgers
Metro Kinokulturhaus, Wien
Leokino, Innsbruck
KIZ Royal Kino, Graz
Moviemento, Linz
Volkskino Klagenfurt (ab 15.9.)
Kino im Kesselhaus (17.9.+24.9.)
Montag 15. September 20.15
Volkskino Klagenfurt
Moderation: Ulrich Haag
Ein Film von Jasmila Žbanic
Wien-Premiere in Anwesenheit der Regisseurin Jasmila Žbanic
am 10. Oktober, 19.30 im Village Cinema
Ab 10. Oktober in folgenden Kinos:
Wien: VILLAGE CINEMA, MILLENIUMCITY
Graz: KIZ Royal Kino
Linz: Moviemento
Innsbruck: Leokino (ab 17. Oktober)
Klagenfurt: Volkskino
EDIMOTION, DE 2025
Nominierung:
BESTE MONTAGE - ANDREA WAGNER
für ihre herausragende Arbeit an
DEAR BEAUTIFUL BELOVED
Erlebt echte Kinomomente bei euch im Ort!
Eine Vielzahl ausgewählter Filme findet Ihr auf
DREI Nominierungen für DEAR BEAUTIFUL BELOVED
- Bester Dokumentarfilm
- Beste Montage
-Beste Tongestaltung
October: Dok Leipzig
November: IDFA