Born on a vast farmstead in Kenya to a former Italian cavalry officer and a student of Rodin, lovers who abandoned their marriages to create a new life, Mirella Ricciardi grew up steeped in the contradictions and reckless optimism of empire. Ricciardi captured her world, photographing East African communities in what would become the iconic Vanishing Africa, and became famous overnight. Celebrated for its intimacy and craft, the work also bears the imprint of the colonial gaze, its aesthetics of disappearance raising ambiguities around authorship, representation, and power.
A striking figure both in front of and behind the camera, she found herself in the artistic elite of 1960s Rome, where she was admired, photographed, and often exoticized her colonial origins and arresting beauty fuelling a fascination that was not entirely her own. She even played herself in Antonioni's L'Eclisse, embodying a version of herself shaped as much by others' gaze as by her own. Now in her nineties, Ricciardi chooses not to have her face filmed. Her presence lingers only through her voice and the images she allows, as she attempts to guide director Oliver Bruck with an elusive but forceful hand. The result is a portrait defined as much by absence as appearance.
MIRELLA is a meditation on power, beauty, and loss. At its core lies a woman who, in her life, negotiates the tension between authorship, visibility, and erasure, shaped by a colonial world she once embodied but that no longer exists.
Internationale Hofer Filmtage 2025, DE
ein Film von Filipe Matzembacher & Marcio Reolon
Brasilien 2025, 119 Minuten, OF mit dt. UT
"So sexy wie smart" Screen Daily
Mi, 11.2., 20.40, KIZ Royal Kino, Graz
Mo 16.2., 20.00, Votivkino Wien
Di 19.2., 20.10, Volkskino Klagenfurt
Mo 25.2., 20.30 Cinematograph Innsbruck
Ein Film von Martin Nguyen
Wien: Village Cinema, Admiralkino
Innsbruck: Leokino
Wels: Programmkino Wels
22.2., 13.00 Matinée im Filmhaus, mit RENATE WELSH, Ausverkauft
27.2., 18.30 Graz-Premiere mit Renate Welsh und Martin Nguyen
Ab 27.2. in folgenden Kinos:
Moviemento Linz
KIZ Royal Graz
6.3., Kino im Kesselhaus, mit Regisseur Martin Ngyuen
10.3. Klagenfurt: 18.00 Lesung Renate Welsh im Musilinstitut, 19.30 Filmvorführung im VOLKSKINO mit Martin Nguyen und Renate Welsh
Weitere Kinos folgen
Ein Film von Reinhard Tötschinger
13.2., 14.2., 15.2., 20.2. und 21.2. Bruck an der Leitha
Ein Film von Jasmila Žbanic
weitere Termine in Kürze
Nächste Termine in Kürze
Erlebt echte Kinomomente bei euch im Ort!
Eine Vielzahl ausgewählter Filme findet Ihr auf
Kino Vod Club, Watch AUT
Highlights Section
12 March, 20.00
18 March, 12.15, 21.15
20 March, 21.00
18 - 22 March Diagonale