TRIESTE the Years of Psychoanalysis
11 settembre 2025
h. 16:15
Italian Contest – Feature Film
Brief Synopsis:
After the First World War, Trieste is a city torn within. The Germans from Trieste have left, replaced by Italian immigrants. From being the Empire’s main port, it has become just one of many Italian ports. Everything must be rebuilt—starting with identity. Even the irredentists now struggle to see themselves as Italian citizens. Here lies the paradox: after fighting to detach from Vienna, Trieste ends up importing a Viennese current of thought—psychoanalysis—which will deeply shape it. This period is recounted through documentary, photographic, and filmic archives, alternating with today’s alienating images of a city unchanged in appearance, but transformed in essence, struggling to recognize itself in figures like Svevo, Saba, Joyce, Fini, Castelli, Bazlen, Dorfles. Why? The film must answer.
Direction Notes:
I enclosed Trieste in the public garden where I played as a child, intimidated by the bronze and stone busts of its famous citizens. I imagined they could speak, telling the story of their bond with the city. I searched the archives for their voices and found that the leitmotif of their lives was the search for identity. The blend is missing—the fused type Bazlen spoke of. For three or four generations, we Triestines have lived personal lives full of unresolved fractures, hard to analyze because they are soaked in contradiction.