Luci dell'avanspettacolo

Stories about life and death during the Day of the Dead season.

Parikka, the actor once called the Funniest Man in Finland, and his troupe are about to be executed for the atrocities committed during the Civil War in Finland. Jaeger Lieutenant Nyborg, an admirer of Parikka, suspects a definite miscarriage of justice. He wants to save the actors. The forthcoming visit of the German General von der Goltz to the prison island provides him with a suitable opportunity. Nyborg suggests that the actors prepare a comical performance for the visitor and not be shot. Instead, they will be given a new trial. Preparing a comedy in the horrible circumstances, in the midst of hunger and death, seems quite an overwhelming task. Only a handful of real actors are still alive, the rest of the troupe consists of stagehands. Parikka has to use all his inventive skills to be able to produce something funny.

An aging, down-and-out public employee must face the primary school examination.

On opening night of a play about addiction and rupture, three actors confront a secret romantic conflict they have long kept hidden. When a betrayal is exposed onstage, the line between fiction and reality shatters, turning the performance into a real confrontation that threatens to destroy everything.

A century after his birth, Sérgio Cardoso — one of the greatest stars of Brazilian theater and television — still inhabits the country’s cultural imagination. A symbol of a generation that helped shape modern stage language in Brazil, his presence endures as an artistic, political, and emotional legacy. Through archives, memories, and the rehearsals of the play “Six Actors in Search of Sérgio Cardoso,” the documentary moves between past and present to explore not only the trajectory of a monumental actor, but also what remains of an artist when time transforms men into myth. As a new generation of performers attempts to rediscover his voice, rigor, and restless spirit, the film reveals how Sérgio Cardoso continues to resonate within contemporary theater — as a ghost, an inspiration, and a founding force of a stage tradition still trying to understand itself.

Marcelo, a deaf and LGBTQIAPN+ youth grieving the loss of his father, finds in a theater group with young deaf artists a possible path to transform his pain. Communicated entirely in Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) and conceived from an aesthetic that prioritizes accessibility.