Molecules

In February 2020, filmmaker Andrea Segre was in Venice when a still-mysterious virus froze the city before his eyes. Piazza San Marco emptied, the logger-jammed Grand Canal went still, and spaces filled instead with a strange, hollow quiet. Lockdown had given the town back to nature and returned something unexpected to Segre as well—memories of his late father, Ulderico. Raised in Venice, he was as reserved in his career as a molecular physicist as he was with his children. Using old Super 8 family films and an unanswered letter he wrote to his father decades earlier, Segre's captivating investigation into his father's silences and absences beautifully dissolve into the emptiness of Venice itself. Through this arrested landscape stripped down to its natural frailties and lack of solidity, Segre unearths the roots of his father's and his own unease. Capturing an extraordinary experience for a city and for a son, Molecules makes real those things one can't see but knows exist. Myrocia Watamaniuk

Co-presented with Italian Trade Commission and Istituto Italiano di Cultura

The Changing Face of Europe program presented in partnership with