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
OKTOBER 2025
ein Film von Sigurður Anton Friðþjófsson
Island 2024, 92 Minuten, OF mit dt. UT
FSK 16
Mi, 8.10., 20:40 KIZ Royal Kino
Mo 20.10., 20.00 Votivkino, Wien
Do 8.10., 20.10 Volkskino Klagenfurt
Mo 27.10., 20:30 Cinematograph
ein Film von Nathalie Borgers
Jetzt im ADMIRALKINO
JETZT im Kino:
BLUM - Gospodari svoje buducnosti
Ein Film von Jasmila Žbanic
Wien: VILLAGE CINEMA, MILLENIUMCITY
ab 24.10. auch im TOPKINO
5.11., 20.00 Film + Talk im ADMIRALKINO
Graz: KIZ Royal Kino
Linz: Moviemento
Innsbruck: Leokino
Klagenfurt: Volkskino
Ein Film von Reinhard Tötschinger
EDIMOTION, DE 2025
Nominierung:
BESTE MONTAGE - ANDREA WAGNER
für ihre herausragende Arbeit an
DEAR BEAUTIFUL BELOVED
Erlebt echte Kinomomente bei euch im Ort!
Eine Vielzahl ausgewählter Filme findet Ihr auf
Kino Vod Club, Watch AUT
BiH´s entry for the 98th ACADEMY AWARDS
in the category: BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
A film by Diana Fabianova
National Premiere:
23 Oct One World FilmFestival Slovakia
International Premiere:
a film by Mwita Mataro and Helmut Karner
International Premiere
World Premieres:
ELEMENT OF(F) BALANCE
Fr 17. Oktober 17.30 Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus
Mo 27.10., 14.00 Filmmuseum
LOIS WEINBERGER - RUDERAL SOCIENTY
Sa 18.10., 16.30 Metro Kinokulturhaus
Di 28.10. 14.45 Metro Kinokulturhaus
October: Dok Leipzig
November: IDFA