EIGHT OF WANDS
An actress leaves for a journey together with a film-maker, TS Eliot's The Waste Land and a deck of Tarots. The omens look gloomy but she attempts to defy them through the very film they are shooting, improvising day by day, and little by little the frames start playing the role of cards in a cinematic deck of Tarots.
At the end the response will be a new one, perhaps even more sibylline, her own.
SELECTIONS AND AWARDS
78th FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DEL CINEMA DI SALERNO
DOC ONLY, Copenhagen
AMSTERDAM NEW CINEMA FILM FESTIVAL, BEST ARTIST FILM
ROMA PRISMA FILM AWARDS, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
CHAMALEON FILM FESTIVAL CONTEMPORARY VISIONS, Napoli, Italy
30th SPLIT INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF NEW FILM, 2025
26th MEDITERAN FILM FESTIVAL, Široki Brijeg, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2025 BEST CAMERA AWARD
AMSTERDAM WSXA 2025 FINALIST
MosDocFest, Moscow 2025, BEST EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY
INTERNATIONAL ART FILM FESTIVAL 2026, Birmingham UK
24th SEGNI DELLA NOTTE IFF, Urbino, Italy FOCUS SECTION - Creation and Self Discovery
8th INNUENDO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026, Milano, Italy BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
11th ZEICHEN DER NACHT IFF, Berlin. 11 June 2026, Cinema in Transgression Competition, MAIN AWARD
EUTOPIA ARTHOUSE FILM FESTIVAL, Belfast, UK 5-15 July 2026
Eight of Wands won the Best Camera Award in the 26th edition of the Mediteran Film Festival, with the following motivation by the Jury:
"The camera, with its calmness, precision, and sensitivity, creates a deep visual and emotional experience. This film is characterized by exceptional subtlety and a sense for the visual rhythm of nature and human presence. Calm, precisely composed frames build a poetic space in which every movement of water, drops, or light, becomes the bearer of an inner state. Black and white and color scenes intertwine in gentle balance, while reflection on water and glass create a sense of duality - a world that simultaneously exists and disappears. Everything in this film pulsates with a quiet strength - between the real and the imagined, between movement and stillness."
Eight of Wands won the Main Award in the Cinema Transgression competition of the 11th Zeichen Der Nacht Film Festival in Berlin (2026), with the following::
JURY DECLARATION
"The jury gives the Main Award to "Eight of Wands" for its exceptional visual precision and its ability to turn landscape, movement, and time into a deeply cinematic experience. The film creates a poetic space where image and inner state become inseparable. Its visual language explores questions of memory and time through rhythm, movement and observation rather than explanation, achieving a rare sense of universality. It's a meditation of human existence on how to continue moving forward when certainty, meaning and direction have been lost".
http://www.zeichendernacht.com/2026/_awards.htm
Some personal remarks about the film:
"As other works we made together, Eight of Wands is a film conceived, dreamt and improvised with actress Maria Frepoli. Even though she didn't want to sign it, I consider it as belonging to both of us on equal terms. We lived it together.
The film unfolded almost by itself as we were travelling and shooting, day by day, as a sort of physical and spiritual road movie, following its own enigmatic way. Both in life and in art: dream and reality, memory and direct experience recorded by the camera were incessantly merging and reflecting into one another. Throughout the film it was very important for us to have a totally spontaneous response to existence: for instance, the three actions performed behind the red curtain by Maria toward the end of the film, responding existentially and artistically to the Tarot cards picked at the beginning, were improvised on the spot. They simply felt necessary, their consequences unpredictable. John Cage said once that an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen". (Cesare Bedogné)
At the end the response will be a new one, perhaps even more sibylline, her own.
SELECTIONS AND AWARDS
78th FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DEL CINEMA DI SALERNO
DOC ONLY, Copenhagen
AMSTERDAM NEW CINEMA FILM FESTIVAL, BEST ARTIST FILM
ROMA PRISMA FILM AWARDS, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
CHAMALEON FILM FESTIVAL CONTEMPORARY VISIONS, Napoli, Italy
30th SPLIT INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF NEW FILM, 2025
26th MEDITERAN FILM FESTIVAL, Široki Brijeg, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2025 BEST CAMERA AWARD
AMSTERDAM WSXA 2025 FINALIST
MosDocFest, Moscow 2025, BEST EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY
INTERNATIONAL ART FILM FESTIVAL 2026, Birmingham UK
24th SEGNI DELLA NOTTE IFF, Urbino, Italy FOCUS SECTION - Creation and Self Discovery
8th INNUENDO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026, Milano, Italy BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
11th ZEICHEN DER NACHT IFF, Berlin. 11 June 2026, Cinema in Transgression Competition, MAIN AWARD
EUTOPIA ARTHOUSE FILM FESTIVAL, Belfast, UK 5-15 July 2026
Eight of Wands won the Best Camera Award in the 26th edition of the Mediteran Film Festival, with the following motivation by the Jury:
"The camera, with its calmness, precision, and sensitivity, creates a deep visual and emotional experience. This film is characterized by exceptional subtlety and a sense for the visual rhythm of nature and human presence. Calm, precisely composed frames build a poetic space in which every movement of water, drops, or light, becomes the bearer of an inner state. Black and white and color scenes intertwine in gentle balance, while reflection on water and glass create a sense of duality - a world that simultaneously exists and disappears. Everything in this film pulsates with a quiet strength - between the real and the imagined, between movement and stillness."
Eight of Wands won the Main Award in the Cinema Transgression competition of the 11th Zeichen Der Nacht Film Festival in Berlin (2026), with the following::
JURY DECLARATION
"The jury gives the Main Award to "Eight of Wands" for its exceptional visual precision and its ability to turn landscape, movement, and time into a deeply cinematic experience. The film creates a poetic space where image and inner state become inseparable. Its visual language explores questions of memory and time through rhythm, movement and observation rather than explanation, achieving a rare sense of universality. It's a meditation of human existence on how to continue moving forward when certainty, meaning and direction have been lost".
http://www.zeichendernacht.com/2026/_awards.htm
Some personal remarks about the film:
"As other works we made together, Eight of Wands is a film conceived, dreamt and improvised with actress Maria Frepoli. Even though she didn't want to sign it, I consider it as belonging to both of us on equal terms. We lived it together.
The film unfolded almost by itself as we were travelling and shooting, day by day, as a sort of physical and spiritual road movie, following its own enigmatic way. Both in life and in art: dream and reality, memory and direct experience recorded by the camera were incessantly merging and reflecting into one another. Throughout the film it was very important for us to have a totally spontaneous response to existence: for instance, the three actions performed behind the red curtain by Maria toward the end of the film, responding existentially and artistically to the Tarot cards picked at the beginning, were improvised on the spot. They simply felt necessary, their consequences unpredictable. John Cage said once that an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen". (Cesare Bedogné)
