Experiencing Interruptions?

Absentia

A Videodance Short Film.
An emotional journey in dance around the theme of Anxiety.
Between the alienating distortions of a troubled mind and her attempt to remain grounded in
reality, a young woman confronts herself with her fears, anxiety and the total loss of control that
alienates her from the rest of the world during an emotional breakdown.

  • Lucia Franci
    Director
  • Lucia Franci
    Writer
  • Francesco Tomasi
    Producer
  • Lucia Franci
    Producer
  • Francesco Invernizzi
    Producer
  • Vittoria Franchina
    Key Cast
    "Io"
  • Vittoria Franchina
    Key Cast
    "Anxiety"
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Absentia
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Other
  • Genres:
    Drama, Videodance
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    February 8, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    33,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    7K RED
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Lucia Franci

With a degree from IULM in Milan in Communication Sciences and in Cinema, Television and Multimedia Production, Lucia began working as an assistant director and editor in the Milanese documentary film industry.
She then switched to commercial production and worked at BRW Filmland Italia for eight years in R&D first and as a Director of TV and Web commercials later. She signs some social commercials with testimonials from the world of sports and TV (Massimiliano Allegri, Amadeus, Milly Carlucci and Paola Perego) and she works with the MTV Italia channel on several productions (including the EXPO 2015 commercial broadcasted worldwide). She left BRW Filmland in 2016 to open, with her partner Francesco Tomasi, Ladybug first and then Ladybug Crossmedia where she holds the role of Author, Creative Director and Director.
During this period, she wrote her first TV series: "Milano ti amo", which would be succeeded a few years later by the series "Influencers". She is proposing both of them to the most important distribution platforms. She is also presenting at national and international festivals with his Videodance short film "Absentia", focused on the theme of panic and in the research and writing phase of her feature film "Human Book ".

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

ABSENTIA was born out of the need to tell the story of a phenomenon that is now rampant in our society, to dissect and better understand a personal experience, to share it with those who are facing it now by reassuring them that they are not alone, and to try to give to those who do not know what anxiety is, at least a small taste of the devastating force that this malaise brings.

Its primary goal is not to tell a story but to make the viewer feel the story.

That is why it chooses a lean, dry narrative that starts in medias res, immediately hurling the viewer into another place, one that is unrecognizable and decidedly unreassuring.
That is why it chooses to relegate reality to the sound plane alone and point the camera at what is unseen.
That is why it renounces verbal language and asks more intangible and emotional languages to work together to express the emotional odyssey of the protagonist.

The project wants to take the viewer, throw him into the lion's den and ask him to "feel together" with the protagonist. To experience with her all the emotions and modalities of a panic attack and then, in retrospect, have at least one more chance to understand its complexity and strength.

To do this, it chooses synesthesia as its keystone, becoming a work centred on the interaction between the languages of film, dance and music working together to express the heroine's emotional journey and, throughout her, the viewer's. The movements of the camera along with or opposed to those of the dance, the rhythm of the dance and music along with that of the editing, the timbres along with the colours, the screeching of the cello along with the tense muscles and contorted poses, everything intertwines and reinforces each other, trying to create an emotional force that is strong enough to shake the viewer.

The project was a challenge for all participants. The audio had to tell a story without the visual counterpart while giving life to an environment and a mood; dance had to show with much tighter timing a struggle with an internal and invisible being, and all languages, in general, had to build a whole world and then figure out how to reduce, how to cut, how to interlock and enhance each other to be able to coexist within a single (limited) audiovisual space, in which they have to know how to breathe in unison. That's why subtraction has been the common thread of the work, the search for that "enough" which, added and interwoven with the others, creates emotional power.

If even those who could never identify with a 30-year-old girl dancing in an empty space get enraptured by her emotions and cannot help but experience what she first is experiencing, then it means that the keystone holds, the vault stands, and the heart has gotten the better of the mind.