ISOLA

Alone and abandoned by her partner, a pregnant woman finds refuge on a beach, venting her anger against the world. Here, after a swim in the sea, she finds a stone with a hole and, looking through it, she sees an enigmatic little girl playing on the shore with a suitcase containing a miniature island. The two begin a dialogue, between tension and complicity, telling each other stories. While the woman narrates dark and cynical versions, the little girl responds with a fairy tale about birth, growth and the passage to life. Until she reveals a shocking truth to her: she herself comes from inside her mother. In an instant, the woman understands that the little girl is the child she carries in her womb, and that her loneliness has never been real.

  • Alessandra Nider
    Director
    Pezzi d'Acqua, Mio Fratello
  • Guido Filacorda
    Producer
    Pezzi d'Acqua, Mio Fratello
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    Italian
  • Shooting Format:
    Film 16mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    /
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Alessandra Nider

Alessandra Nider (Trieste, August 6, 1997) graduated from the Liceo Artistico Sello in Udine and continued her studies in Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. She then attended the DAMS in Gorizia, graduating in 2024 with a thesis on Béla Tarr’s cinema, where she compared the final chapter of his film Pezzi d'Acqua with The Turin Horse. Through the analysis conducted with professor and film critic Cosetta Saba, she reflected on Tarr’s theory of the ‘death of cinema,’ contrasting it with a vision of hope and rebirth of cinematic language.

Her artistic path is characterized by a continuous exploration between visual arts and cinema, with particular attention to staging, costumes, and the construction of narrative worlds. After starting as an art director, she expanded her field of work to become a writer and producer. In 2022, she co-founded the Futura collective with Guido Filacorda, aiming to create an innovative and independent space for film production.

Her first short film, Mio Fratello, which she wrote and produced, was also the inaugural project of Futura. She later wrote, directed, and produced the feature film Pezzi d'Acqua, which was released in 2024 in Italian art-house cinemas. Currently, she is developing her second feature film, Luce, a fairytale-like and visionary work. To give the project a more concrete form and make it more accessible at the production level, she decided to first create a short version, a sort of ‘manifesto’ in which the characters almost seem to present their story to the audience, awaiting its full life in the film.

In 2025, Luce was selected for a workshop at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Palermo, where Alessandra refined the screenplay under the guidance of Amir Naderi.

Her deepest research is the pursuit of beauty. Aware of the Italian cinema's tendency to focus on heaviness and drama, Alessandra aims, through her works, to bring light, a breath that enhances the aesthetic and poetic side of storytelling.

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