Twisted
Date:
December 15, 2022
Twisted
Twisted
by Martina Sarritzu and Giorgia Malatrasi
Rodaggio | Italy
Tesla | Italy
Short animation
*the access to our meeting platform and director’s previous works will start from January 10, 2025
Logline
Giada is an insecure pre-teen dealing with the awkwardness of her age. Due to severe scoliosis she is forced to wear a bulky brace for 16 hours a day. Sharing this secret with the boy she likes will turn her difference into an unexpected super-power.
Synopsis
Giada is an insecure 13 years old girl living in the countryside near the Adriatic Riviera, dealing with the horrible changes of her age: pimples sprouting out on her face, avoiding to smile openly because of her dental braces and trying not to seem the uncoolest of her school. She does not get along with the girls in her class, but there are two boys she can call friends. They like to show off the swear words they know and get up to mischief.
Giada’s life changes when she is unexpectedly diagnosed with severe scoliosis. Her doctor prescribes a bulky plastic brace, which must be worn for 16 hours a day. Seemingly unaware of just how much of an ordeal this is for her daughter Giada’s mother asks her to pick the brace up herself at the hospital. Moreover, the orthopedic technician who has to take her brace cast turns out to be slimy and he even mess around her breast more than necessary. Things go from bad to worse when she is harassed by a group of football supporters on the train that takes her home.
Giada desperately tries to keep the brace hidden from the rest of the world. She also invents excuses not to leave the house, spiraling in overly sad, almost hallucinatory thoughts. But despite her best efforts, she can’t keep the embarrassing secret hidden from her friends forever. Yet their reaction will change her perception of her body and their friendship forever. Turning a hateful difference into a new kind a of superpower.
Director’s Profile
MARTINA SARRITZU is a cartoonist and illustrator combining Social Studies with her education at the Academy of Fine Arts. Her works focus on kitsch, bodies and tragicomic events. VACANZE IN SCATOLA (Canicola Edizioni), illustrated by her and written by Tuono Pettinato, won at Treviso Comic Book Festival 2020 the Award for Best Comics for Young Readers. In 2021 she took part in A.M.A.R.E. (Canicola Edizioni), a five-voice women’s anthology that explores the theme of adolescence and won the Lucca Comics & Games Award as Best Short Story. In 2022, SCIAME was published by Canicola Edizioni: the book is a collection of six stories that get to the heart of adolescence and talk about changing bodies, absolute friendships, bewilderment and daily struggles.
In 2024, her first graphic novel will be released with Minimum Fax’s comics series.
GIORGIA MALATRASI is an author and film maker living between Germany and Italy. After graduating in Communication, she earned a MA in Still and Set Photography and worked for 10 years as creative producer for VICEMedia. She specialized in short and medium length documentary formats. Her first feature film as an author “Searching Eva” took part at Berlinale Talents and premiered at the ’19 Berlin Film Fest; the documentary has been selected in several film festivals around the world and broadcasted by ZDF in Germany. At the moment she’s working to the development of a new feature length documentary and a TV serie.
Company Profile
Rodaggio is a film production and distribution company based in Bologna, Italy, devoted to promote and foster hidden stories and to develop film restoration and unusual film archive related project.
In the last years it has distributed, among the others, “9 Doigts / 9 Fingers” by the french musician, writer and director F.J. Ossang, winner of the Silver Pardo at the 2019 Locarno Film Festival, and the documentary “The Disappearance of My Mother” by Beniamino Barrese, shortlisted at the 2020 European Film Awards, in the Official Selection of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, also winner of The Women in Film Award, the Best Film Award at Cinédoc-Tbilisi 2019, the Gran Jury Award at the Global Cinema Film Festival Of Boston 2019, the Cinema Eye Honour Award as Best Debut Feature in 2020.
Its co-founder is also a teacher for the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in the Film restoration and Film Heritage Management course.
In 2021 the company started its production activity with its first feature documentary “LIGHTS OFF” by Mattia Epifani supported by the Emilia Romagna Film Commission both for development and production and by national MIC funds, with also a pre-sales agreement with Sky Cinema, now going to be released. The short movie “Twisted” by Martina Sarritzu and Giorgia Malatrasi, with also the experienced animator Dalila Rovazzani attached to the project as animation director, is the company’s first animated production.