Villa Serpentara Fellowship 2024
Melisa Liebenthal
*1991, Buenos Aires (ARG)
Lives in Berlin (DE)
Section: Film and Media Arts
Vita
Melisa Liebenthal is a film director and editor. Her work reflects on identity and its relation to the construction of an image. She directed the films THE PRETTY ONES (2016, 77 min.), CONSTANZA (2018, 27 min.), HERE AND THERE (2020, 21 min.) and THE FACE OF THE JELLYFISH (2022, 76 min.), with which she won awards at Rotterdam IFF, Mar del Plata IFF and the Berlinale, and was featured in MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center, amongst others. She is a film graduate at Universidad del Cine in Argentina and at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in France.
Residency
During my residency, I will work on writing my next feature film project, which follows the story of Emilia and Andreas, an Argentinian and German couple living in Berlin. What happens in the film is that one day Emilia falls for another guy and is so lost in her feelings that she shares this with Andreas. The veil of illusion hovering over their bond breaks; they will have to figure out how to deal with desire, that ball without a handle, if they want to stay together. The film also opens up other materials, becoming a loose study on sex and romantic relationships: voice-over tales of other characters' experiences and of Emilia’s past mingle with a documentary record of life in Berlin, a capital that harbors a whole generation in search of an alternative way of life.