Presented as part of the 20th edition of Venice Days in the section Giornate degli Autori, Proiezioni Speciali / Incontri con gli autori, Il popolo delle donne (60′, Italy, 2023) is produced by Dugong Films, in collaboration with PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea and ACACIA – Associazione Amici Arte Contemporanea Italiana, and distributed by Barz and Hippo.
The film highlights the relationship between women’s growing social empowerment and the rise in sexual abuse by men – a trend that was the opposite of what was largely expected to happen. The film revolves around Marina Valcarenghi, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst with a forty-five-year career in clinical work that has allowed her to observe the persistence of women’s insecurity, despite the economic and social independence they have gradually achieved, and understand why. Valcarenghi was the first to introduce psychoanalysis in prisons, starting with the Opera and Bollate penitentiaries. For twelve years she worked with male inmates held in solitary confinement; most of them had been convicted of sexual violence.
Yuri Ancarani was born in 1972 in Ravenna (Italy), he lives and works in Milan.
Yuri Ancarani is an Italian video artist and filmmaker. His works come from a continuous mingling of documentary cinema and contemporary art and are the result of a research aimed to explore regions which are not very visible in the daily life, realities in which the artist delves in first person.
His works have been shown at national and international museums and exhibitions, such as:PAC-Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (Milano, Italy); MAMbo (Bologna, Italy); Fondazione Prada (Milano, Italy); Kunstverein Hannover (Germany); MoMA (New York, USA); Teatrino Palazzo Grassi (Venezia, Italy); Castello di Rivoli (Rivoli-Torino, Italy); Manifesta 12 (Palermo, Italy); Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, Switzerland); Art Basel Unlimited (Basel, Switzerland); 16° Quadriennale d’Arte “Altri tempi, altri miti”, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Roma, Italy); 55° Esposizione d’Arte Internazionale, Il Palazzo Enciclopedico, La Biennale di Venezia (Italy); Beursschouwburg (Brussel, Belgio); CAC, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (Geneva, Switzerland); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); Fondazione Sandretto, Re Rebaudengo (Torino, Italy); Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, California); AMACI, Museo del Novecento (Milano, Italy); MAXXI, Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo (Roma, Italy); R. Solomon Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA); Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France); RaebervonStenglin (Zurigo, Switzerland); Stiftung Insel Hombroich (Neuss, Germany).
And at several film festivals, such as: Premio Film Impresa (Roma, Italy); Transit Film Festival (Regensburg, Germany); New York Film Festival (New York City, USA); DocAviv (Tel Aviv, Israel); Festa Do Cinema Italiano (Lisbon, Portugal); Camden International Film Festival (Maine, USA); New Directors/New Films, MoMA (New York, USA); Desert Exhibition of Art (Palm Spring, California); True/False Film Festival (Columbia, Missouri); SXSW South by Southwest (Houston, Texas); Ann Arbor Film Festival (Michigan, USA); Hot Docs (Toronto, Canada); TIFF Toronto International Film Festival (Toronto, Canada); BIM Biennale dell’Immagine in Movimento, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (Geneva, Switzerland); Locarno Film Festival (Locarno, Switzerland); Viennale (Vienna, Austria); 78°, 67° and 68° Festival del Cinema di Venezia (La Biennale di Venezia, Italy); IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam (Rotterdam, Olanda); 23° IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Olanda); Cinéma du Réel (Centre Pompidou, Paris France); CPH:DOX (Copenhagen, Denmark); Festival International du Film de La Roche sur Yon (La Roche sur Yon, France); Beat Film Festival (Moscow, Russia); Taipei Film Festival (Taipei, Taiwan).
