Vakhim

VAKHIM, is a film by Francesca Pirani, presented on 6 September 2024 at Notti Veneziane, an off space of Venice Days, at Sala Laguna, in collaboration with Isola Edipo, during the 81st Venice International Film Festival. It also participated in the 18th edition of the Salina Doc Fest, winning the SIGNUM prize awarded by the public.

The film, produced by Luca Criscenti for Land Comunicazioni, in collaboration with Valeria Adilardi, is a powerful tale that deals with an intimate and personal story in which universal themes resonate: the drama of separation, the loss of affection, the relationship between parents and children, the defence of memory and cultural identity. Adopted in Cambodia at the age of four, Vakhim arrived in Italy in 2008. He speaks only Khmer and everything around him is unknown. The past is now behind him, but Maklin, his elder sister, is also in Italy and a few years later a letter arrives: it is Vakhim’s birth mother asking about her son. Francesca and Simone, the adoptive parents, decide to go and look for her. Pirani, a multifaceted director and screenwriter who began her career collaborating with the master Marco Bellocchio, with this film puts herself on the line, opens the doors of her experience and tells the story of her son. With a mixture of private archive material and new footage, the director moves between realism and the poetics of memory and, thanks to the use of different styles and techniques, succeeds in depicting the complexity of Vakhim’s story, going beyond the boundaries of simple documentary narration. The director’s voice-over accompanies the viewer on an enthralling journey between Italy and Cambodia and questions, amidst emotions, doubts, certainties and hopes, the complexity of family relationships and the profound meaning of being a family.

The original soundtrack was entrusted to Tony Carnevale, with whom Francesca Pirani had already worked on the film Una bellezza che non lascia scampo, another work of great complexity due to the presence of music within the screenplay. As for VAKHIM, all the composition work was based on the search for sonorities that could represent and evoke the sound environment, the deep ‘memories’ of the early years of the protagonist’s life, thus linked to South-East Asia, but without being too ‘rigorous’. Trying, therefore, to relate this world to the western world into which the protagonist was catapulted at the age of four and grew up to become the 20-year-old boy he is today.

The soundtrack moves between thematic lines related to the emotional realities of the characters and indeterminate sounds, with careful work on sound placements, thanks to the author’s own Dolby Surround 5.1 system.

What clearly emerges from this soundtrack is Tony Carnevale’s particular compositional poetics with regard to the music-image relationship, where sounds become an integral part of the stage movement, as they too are treated as ‘images’ (*); but this was discussed in a more in-depth interview, edited by the magazine colonnesonore.net, which can be read by clicking on this link.

The most intense moments of Carnival’s compositions are interpreted by the beautiful voice of Lavinia Mancusi.

At this link you can see the trailer of the film, with a small sample of the original music.

*For more on the sound-image relationship see Tony Carnevale’s book Oltre le note – un approccio non razionale alla musica