Skip to main content

Michele Pennetta

Director
Michele Pennetta is an Italian director known for his work in documentary filmmaking. He gained critical acclaim for his film "Il mio corpo," which explores the life of a group of young refugees in Sicily. Pennetta has received several awards for his innovative storytelling and unique approach to filmmaking.

Films

My Body

My Body

By Michele Pennetta

2020 | 80 min | Documentary

This documentary-narrative film hybrid tells the story of two Sicilian underdogs in strong, neorealistic Cinemascope images.

Recommended for you

Jaffa - The Orange's Clockwork

Jaffa - The Orange's Clockwork

2009 | 87 min | Documentary

"A moving and critical, yet balanced, multi-layered political essay that unpeels the untold story of the world´s most famous fruit that originated in Palestine." (Aviva-Berlin.de) In his documentary, Eyal Sivan traces the orange-brand JAFFA using a unique composition of archival material. He shows old photos, early film-footage, commercials, political posters, and paintings of the Jaffa orange to Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals and to workers from the citrus industry. They remember, reflect ...

Thing I Don't Get

Thing I Don't Get

2018 | 71 min | Drama

When he falls in love with his best friend Marike, he no longer knows what he wants. At school, Johannes is the bumpkin. Neglected by his father and brother, he seeks the company of his best friend Marike. As their friendship gradually turns into love, Johannes no longer knows where he belongs. This intense coming of age story was Henning Beckhoff's Master's Degree film at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. "At the center of this coming of age story is the contrast between modernity and ...

Ties That Bind

Ties That Bind

2017 | 102 min | Documentary

"Just when I thought I was finally at peace with my feelings for my parents and my origins, our father bequeaths his old farmhouse to me and my sister." "The inheritance of stone is meant to tie us back to that place in the Salzburg mountains where we grew up and where my parents still live. I suffer from shortness of breath. I realize: the conflict with my family has not stopped. With my return, a new look at my parents begins." (IVETTE LÖCKER) "A humorous and touching portrait of a Salzburg marriage ...

Music

Music

2014 | 38 min | Drama

At work, Adam incarnates the persistent official, who checks substandard dwellings with an unruffled expression. He wants to do something different, something like music. His teenage daughter is ruthlessly direct in saying what she thinks of her father: he is a "victim" (and that's meant as an insult), because he still lives in his own debt-riddled home, which the rest of the family has long moved out from. And he is embarrassing because he never says or does anything that she can brag MUSIC is ...

Dancing Alone

Dancing Alone

2012 | 98 min | Documentary

Biene Pilavci deals with the question to what extent the hostility between her parents and the frequent outbreaks of violence influenced her and her four siblings. Although she had already distanced herself from her family at the age of 12, she comes to the realization in the course of her film that you can't go anywhere without taking your past with you. In her moving and very personal DFFB graduation film, Biene Pilavci gives us an intimate insight into the world of a complex family structure ...

The Pastors Children: Punks, Politicians and Philosophers

The Pastors Children: Punks, Politicians and Philosophers

2017 | 84 min | Biography

In the 1960's church communities expected a pastor's daughter to be less outgoing than other girls her age, less bubbly, and less selfish. Filmmaker Angela Zumpe, Professor for Audiovisual Media at the Anhalt University in Dessau, starts with the perspective of the pubescent 16-year-old and old Super 8 films from that time. In interviews she compares her own experiences with those of other pastors' children. Some of them have brought their choice of profession back to the parsonage, others have ...

Soldatin

Soldatin

2024 | 23 min | Documentary

A young woman commutes between two worlds: while serving in the German Armed Forces, she is preparing for a six-month deployment to Mali – with machine gun training, marching orders, and military drill. At the same time, she lives a different life: in an aesthetic clinic, she treats the faces of a modern affluent society with Botox. A fascinating contrast emerges between the barracks and the beauty salon – between preparations for war and beauty routines, obedience and self-realization, harshness ...

A Black Jesus

A Black Jesus

2020 | 92 min | Documentary

Once a year in the small Sicilian town of Siculiana, a black statue of Jesus is carried in procession through the crowded streets of the town on the shoulders of selected believers. On this occasion, hundreds of Siculianese emigrants come from all parts of Italy and abroad to pay homage to their patron saint. In recent years, however, the city has been divided over the presence of asylum seekers at Villa Sikania, a hotel that was converted into a reception center for refugees in 2014. Few Siculianesi ...

Ella

Ella

2014 | 15 min | Shorts

Ella is a Polish migrant worker who works in Germany to finance her daughter's studies in Poland. Due to illness, her job seems to be in jeopardy. When her daughter decides to come to Germany and faces the same fate as Ella, the mother decides to blackmail her boss for severance pay. The film ELLA deals with social tensions and dependencies that recur in many European migration biographies. The short film focuses on family responsibility, structural exploitation, and the tension between origin and ...

Talea

Talea

2013 | 75 min | Drama

It's summer holidays, and the planned Italian holiday with Jasmin's foster family is just around the corner. Everyone is looking forward to the trip - except Jasmin. She wants to be with Eva, her mother, who is available to Jasmin for the first time after a long prison term. For weeks Jasmin has been seeking Eva's closeness, she does not give up, even if she is rejected by her. After a fight with her foster family, Jasmin runs away and persuades Eva to spend a short holiday in the countryside with ...