BERLINALE 2020 - Semina il vento (Sow the Wind)

70th BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL

Danilo Caputo's Semina il vento (Sow the Wind) is a submissive and stoic drama with themes of environmentalism, ideology and the fight against big business.

Semina il vento is not too dissimilar to Ken Loach's magnum opus Kes. Not only in terms of the narrative following a young character in search of life and enlightenment, yet surrounded by a repressive land and parents, but the staunch thematic subtextual weight of the broader issues at play. That being said, to call Danilo Caputo's film, the Italian Kes, would undermine the terrific work at play here. While the themes are similar, Caputo's film holds a different strength in executing them.

Semina il vento (Sow the Wind) slowly but surely brews with an eruption, and while said climax is somewhat anti-climactic, it is curated in that vein due to the oppressive contextual nature of the world of Nica (Yile Yara Vianello). In how idle the film is written, predominately in the autocratic parents that Nica lives with and the small town that is slowly eroding away to big business and fraud, there is a sense of hopelessness that drowns, and ultimately engulfs anything and everything in its wake. 

Such an element is incorporated with deep and layered sentiments by writer-director Danilo Caputo's, of whom incorporates heightened components to emphasise and intensify the agony and suffering that is surrounding this plot. The cinematography for one is intimate and often inescapable from Christos Karamanis. The love and compassion of Yile Yara Vianello's character Nica and her passion to rescue her parents from financial doom are compelling and heartfelt in a multitude of close-ups that crafts a bubble of purity. 

Yile Yara Vianello's performance is an element that throughout elevates this work tenfold, of which without such a performance Semina il vento (Sow the Wind) would fall into the category of simplistic conventional tale. Vianelloeffortlessly crafts a character layered with internal pain and agony, through small, suggestive nuances of stoic behaviour. The mental claustrophobia and the enlightenment of purpose, battle each under the surface. It is only until the films third act in which said theme explosively comes to the surface in a traumatic and fiery fashion.

Granted, Semina il vento (Sow the Wind) does not break new ground in its genre or effectiveness in its activism. Nevertheless, with a wonderfully curated central performance from Yile Yara Vianello with deep thematic weight, and terrific cinematographer and a subtle telling score from Valerio Camporini, makes for an emotive and engaging drama.