December 12, 2019

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Giulia Gandini

NFFTY has grown into a wonderful community of over 2,700 filmmakers from around the world. Alumni have experienced success in many areas of the media industry. To celebrate these achievements, we are highlighting NFFTY alumni here!

Giulia Gandini is a NFFTY ‘18 and ‘19 alumni and London-based filmmaker. Her work has played at several festivals, including Cleveland International Film Festival and BUFF Malmo Film Festival, and her first documentary was produced after she won the #TweetAPitch competition in 2018 at the BFI. Her short film Alright premiered at the UN Women headquarters in NYC and was distributed online by Adobe Project1324, going viral within 24 hours.

Her most recent short narrative film My Time won both the Best Narrative Short Jury Award at NFFTY 2019 following its screening in the Opening Night program, as well as won the Best Live-Action Short Jury Award at the Oscar-qualifying Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, long-listing it for the 2020 Oscars!

OUR INTERVIEW WITH GIULIA:

What inspires you to center your work on personal stories and anecdotes from your life?

One of the main reasons why I'm a filmmaker is because I'm an emotional person: I like creating an emotion on screen and sharing it with audiences. Drawing inspiration from my own life makes it easy for me to fully grasp the emotion I want to express, 'cause I've already lived it on my own skin (so not only I feel it, but also visualise it and hear it in all of its layers and complexity).

What advice would you give to a new director for creating an open and communicative space on set, potentially with traditionally hard-to-discuss or taboo subject matter?

I'd say the most important thing is being genuine when talking about the taboo topic, and have a clear point of view on it. There shouldn't be any doubt as to where you stand when it comes to it. In the case of My Time I involved well-established charities committed to the cause of period positivity from the very beginning of pre-production, and invited cast and crew to check them out to give a better sense of what I wanted the film to stand for. We had free tampons and menstrual products on set, booklets about menstruations for the young actors to take home, posters about period positivity, a collection point to donate to the charities involved. On the first day on set I grouped cast and crew in the green room and openly addressed the importance of the film in relation to menstrual positivity before starting to shoot. The key is to choose a topic you truly care about (either from a social, personal or artistic point of view) and making people feel comfortable about it, creating a safe space for conversation on set.

What's the best part of working with young talent, and how is working with them different from working with older actors?

What I love the most about working with young talent is how straightforward and genuine the acting process can be. Young child actors are to a certain extent less aware of their role as "actors" on set: they more often focus on the emotion and immediacy of the scene rather than being self-conscious or self-critical of their acting. They do it to have fun, explore and create in the purest way!

How has My Time been received so far, and what kind of change do you hope comes from people seeing your film?

I'm very grateful for the festival run that My Time has had so far! We've been part of so many incredible festivals (NFFTY included OBVIOUSLY) and screened in front of so many different audiences worldwide. We most recently won the Best Short Film Award at Oscar-qualifying Chicago International Children's Film Festival, and next month we're screening for the first time in China! I hope My Time inspires people (especially younger audiences) to normalise periods, feel free to openly talk about them and fight the shame and stigma surrounding them.

How did you become interested in filmmaking, and what challenges did you face at the start of your career that you learned the most from?

I've always been interested in storytelling, and that's what makes me the happiest: telling stories through images. I only realised that could be a career when I moved from my small hometown in Italy to London at 19, and made my first short film at 22 (quite late for NFFTY standards, I know)! I think the biggest challenge for me was finding filmmaking and giving it a proper shot: I have fond memories of the Italian city where I grew up, but I must admit it wasn't quite stimulating enough from a creative perspective for me. Moving to London to study Film Studies felt like a huge step at the time, but no matter how much I miss family, friends or Italian food, there's no single day I regret it. Taking risks and getting out of my comfort zone was the best thing I could have ever done.

You've been a wonderful presence at NFFTY for the past two years, can you talk a little bit about how your experience at the festival has impacted you?

NFFTY is such an incredible festival, and not only because of the quality of programming and venues. The team really makes you feel like your work as a young filmmaker has value and importance, which is quite rare. The festival has given me so much positivity, inspiration and creative energy! I wished it could last all-year round!

What's next for you?

I'm distributing my first short documentary entitled HOME STREAM (a documentary about homelessness, shot on iPhone by a homeless woman herself), it should be released sometime soon on NowThis and Real Stories so keep your eyes out (the hope is for it to become an online mini-series)! I'm also in pre-production on a new short film called RUNNER, hopefully shooting in April 2020. And I'm developing my first feature film. Wish me luck!