L'estate di Giacomo

After a long opening scene in which 19-year-old Giacomo plays a stormy drum solo while the camera focuses on his hearing aid, the hard-of-hearing boy sets off on a languid summer afternoon with his childhood girlfriend Stefi through the woods to a remote river. There the two swim and sunbathe, enjoy picnic sandwiches, chatter away mindlessly, listen to music and throw clay at each other in the water.
During large parts of the minimalist, delicate, occasionally sultry Summer of Giacomo, the camera moves not a millimetre off Giacomo and Stefi - the viewer can almost count the spots on his back and the soft tears in her neck. The wonderful, nonprofessional actors Giacomo Zulian and Stefania Comodin apparently have no trouble holding the viewer's attention and slowly the relationship between the two of them becomes clearer. At last year's Locarno Festival, novice director Alessandro Comodin won an award in the category ‘Cineasti del Presenti’ (Filmmakers of the Present).