Fashion Film Festival Milano 2023

On June 19, the Milan Fashion Film Festival (FFFMilano), founded and directed by Constanza Etro celebrated the 16 winning films of the ninth edition at the Odeon Cinema in Milan. After three years, due to the pandemic, the most awaited event of the Festival is back in attendance with an international audience from the world of fashion, design cinema and culture to showcase the cutting-edge contamination between fashion and cinema.

The much-loved Paola Maugeri led the evening, who with her style and sense of humor captured the attention of the prominent personalities present in the room, among them the International Jury who presented the prestigious prizes — made exclusively for the FFFMilano at Fornasetti — to the 16 winners, among them: the British director and photographer Alasdair McLellan, the collective Cristian Hunter and Martin Gatti, the creative director of her eponymous brand Sara Battaglia and Federico Scaglia and Salvatore delle Femmine who won the award for “Best Italian Fashion Film” with “La Vacanza” for Versace. For the first time, the prize of “Best Metaverse Fashion Film” was awarded to the Chinese artist Reiki Zhang, who interpreted the new visions of fashion in the world of virtual reality and the web3 in a more original way. Also present was Alberto Maria Colombo, the artist who is innovating the use of artificial intelligence as well as responsible for the artwork of the 2023 Festival.

The winning and nominated films are available for streaming on the official website www.fffmilano.com as part of the 2023 Official Selection of more than 270 fashion films. Furthermore, it will be possible to discover the winners’ films in the virtual space of the Festival, created in collaboration with RED-EYE Metazine on the spatial.io platform, by connecting to this link.

As in every edition, on the jury front, Fashion Film Festival Milano 2023 fielded a heterogeneous and original team of personalities, but with a common denominator: the maximum authority in their own cultural territory.

• Elisa Sednaoui – Supermodel, writer and founder of the benefit corporation Funtasia Enterprise
• Michelle Francine Ngonmo – Founder CEO “Afro Fashion Week” and “Red Carpet Awards”
• Massimo Giorgetti – Founder and Creative Director of “MSGM”
• Francesco Carrozzini – Director and photographer
• Stefano Tonchi – Journalist, former editor-in-chief “The New York Times Style Magazine”
• Stefania Rocca – Internationally renowned Italian actress and director
• Barnaba Fornasetti – Artistic director “Fornasetti”
• Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo – President of the “Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation”
• Emma Hakansson – Founder of the sustainable organization “Collective Fashion Justice”
• Sarah Bassett – Creative Director
• Daniel Sannwald – Photographer, Director
• Ben Cobb – ES Magazine Editor
• Koto Bolofo, Photographer
• Miss Fame, Model, Drag Queen

THE WINNERS OF THE NINTH EDITION

The 2023 International Jury has chosen the following winners:

Fashion Film Festival Milano 2023

• BEST EDITING

PRESENT TENSE
Directed by Fabrizio Narcisi for NR Magazine

“Given the difficult but in some strange way stimulating times we’re living, I developed the concept of Celebration from a definitely positive and philosophical perspective. Through a choral film that follows different characters in situations that oscillate between the real and the symbolic sphere, I want to convey the message of a celebration of the ups and downs of youth, of the present time we’re living and the beauty of the nature of our identity.” Fabrizio Narcisi

Country: Italy 

• BEST STYLING

IT IS NOT SPRING UNTIL ALL FLOWERS BLOSSOM
Directed by Curry Sicong Tian for Ya Yi

It Is Not Spring, Until All Flowers Blossom is the début collection from the New York based design label YA YI. The collection is a response to the designer ‘s personal experience of her working alongside the Chinese immigrants that make up the garment factories in New York, whose names are scarcely mentioned by the industry nor celebrated designers. The title comes from Shui Mak Ka, a factory worker who initialized the 1982 Garment Strike in New York Chinatown. On Mott Street, over 20,000 garment workers — almost entirely women — marched down the center of Chinatown to Columbus Park on a warm spring day in 1982. The collection portrays the overlooked laboring body of Asian immigrant women by recreating their portraits through female performers veiled with translucent lace and knit jacquard fabrics, adorned with heavily fringed garments and embroidered flower accessories.

Country: United States

• BEST MUSIC

GOLA
Directed by Vitoria de Mello Franco, Ian Cheibub, Marina Zabenzi for Saskia Lenaers

Gola was shot in Brazil and sheds new perspectives on transnationalism by celebrating the positive outcomes which develop from negative ancestral displacements. Exploring and expanding the limits of territory and personal versus collective space. Being conscious of how politically charged the basic act of crossing a line has become, she asks us to look beyond and imagine the possibilities that arise from cross-cultural lifestyles. Fundamentally GOLA (advance and retreat) celebrates the positive outcomes which develop from negative ancestral displacements. This collection uses disguise to conceal disguise. The therapeutic design, craft and manufacturing processes applied when mutating, disguising and repurposing military garments are the vehicle for social healing.

Country: Brazil

• BEST DOCUMENTARY

EL PATIO
Directed by Esteban Ávila

Two children, Ámbar and Boreal, who use the patio as a middle point to share and grow. Boreal, for reasons of life, moves home, leaving Ámbar broken and in an emotional space of mourning where she has to face her emotions and perception of masculinity.

Country: Costa Rica

• BEST PHOTOGRAPHY

FALLING
Directed by Vic Guan

Country: China

• BEST EXPERIMENTAL FASHION FILM

LJSF! (LES JEUX SONT FAITS)
Directed by Matei Octav for À Part Magazine

Les, Jeux, Sont and Faits land on an unexplored planet to invent new rules and a total new reality. Thus the LJSF!Mania will start

Country: Italy

Fashion Film Festival Milano 2023

• BEST GREEN FASHION FILM

TERRA CENE
Directed by Nono Ayuso & Rodrigo Inada for Karman Foundation

Terra Cene is a remembrance of things past and an observation of the interconnected nature of time on Earth. Directors, Rodrigo Inada and Nono Ayuso reimagining of the 1977 Golden Record challenges our perception of time while dissecting its motivations. Through a carefully crafted narrative that weaves through time past, time present, and time future, Terra Cene urgently questions, who and what will be left to remember? If the end is built into the beginning, it is our responsibility to protect the future. We are guests, here for only a moment. Terra Cene delivers a hauntingly hopeful message, reminding us of our duty to preserve the beauty of life on Earth.

Country: United Kingdom

• BEST NEW DESIGNER or BRAND

TAL MASLAVI
With “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response” by Asaf Einy

“ASMR is a term used to describe a physical reaction that is characterized by tingling sensation and is usually caused by tactile and cognitive stimuli. Modern life exists on the border of physical and virtual and as such our ability to touch and feel has been compromised. At the same time the devices through which we experience life are becoming sleeker, smoother and less tactile.In my final collection, I examined the human need for touch, interaction and perhaps even a grasp of reality.looking at the ease with which we have expropriated our senses in the transition to digital life.The visual language of the collection is inspired by the visuals of online content creators of “satisfying videos” that flooded the social networks and offer the viewer a synthetic ASMR experience.Familiar clothing details were transferred to a speculative realm where the materiality, their color story and purpose was re-examined.The result is an avant-garde men’s collection with a humorous and critical look that asks the wearer to feel once more.” – Tal Maslavi

Country: Israel

• BEST NEW ITALIAN DESIGNER or BRAND

SARA BATTAGLIA
With “Anna Cleveland” directed by Marco Celotti

ANNA CLEVELAND WITH HER TATI BAG AND A CHEWING GUM.
ANNA CLEVELAND ON THE PHONE.
ANNA CLEVELAND IS EATING A CHEESEBURGER.
ANNA CLEVELAND LAUGHS.
ANNA CLEVELAND PUTS ON HER LIPSTICK.

Country: Italy

• BEST NEW FASHION FILM

ORIGIN AW 23
Directed by Amanda Trom

The short film and the fashion collection is inspired by intergenerational dynamics within a South African context. a young black south African’s way of navigating a very modern world, having modern views and practices while still belonging to a traditional home and trying to marry the two. It is truly a love story that involves curiosity and self-discovery in an attempt to delve into blackness. It’s about modern-day blackness, pride and love for oneself and their community of her. With a very modern streetwear-inspired collection, the film takes place in a very traditional African landscape as its backdrop. Thought-provoking poetry also play its part in the storytelling.

Country: South Africa

• BEST NEW ITALIAN FASHION FILM

UTOPIA FW22/23
Directed by Andrew Superview for Caterina Moro

Utopia was born from a feeling: during the terrible months of spring 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic exploded, we swore that everything would change, that nothing would ever be the same again. Dolphins w

ere back in the canals of Venice and bears in the cities; we said we would reconnect with nature and learn from our mistakes. But two years later, everything looks the same. UTOPIA imagines a different future, starting again from a New Enlightenment: a future in which man, through reason and progress, learns a new way of relating to Mother Nature.

Country: Italy

• BEST ITALIAN FASHION FILM

LA VACANZA
Directed by Federico Scaglia, Salvatore delle Femmine for Versace

A tongue-in-cheek video diary sees the models recalling how they spent their summer, but flashbacks reveal they’re not quite telling the truth. Playful and optimistic, the series hopes to spread a little Versace glamor this vacation season.

Country: Italy

• BEST NEW DIRECTOR

FALLING
Directed by Vic Guan

Country: China

• BEST DIRECTOR

ALASDAIR MCLELLAN
With “CK1 Palace” for Calvin Klein & Palace

Directed by British photographer-director Alasdair McLellan for the highly anticipated collaboration between Calvin Klein and Palace, ‘CK1 Palace’ cuts back and forth between the two long-connected and mutually inspiring metropolises of New York and London. Representing the east side of the Atlantic are Brits including Dame Joan Collins, the Pet Shop Boys, Adwoa Aboah, Unknown T along with familiar Palace faces. West side representatives include Willem Dafoe, Precious Lee and Lola Leon

Country: United Kingdom

• BEST METAVERSE FASHION FILM

THE DIGITAL RITUALS
Directed by Reiki Zhang

The Digital Rituals is a series of rituals to explore the possibilities of digital identity. When the future comes, when humans and digital beings live in symbiosis, what form will human rituals take? With the involvement of digital beings and virtual identities, how will these rituals differ from the forms we know? This project will take primitive nature worship rituals as a starting point and explore the forms of digital religious rituals. It then explores how human birth, wedding, funeral and nature worship rituals will be presented in the metaverse.

Country: China

• BEST FASHION FILM

INFINITE
Directed by Cristian Hunter, Martin Gatti for Nick Fouquet

Infinite is a film, photography and art multi-media project created by Hunter & Gatti with Nick Fouquet, a metaphor for what lies below the physical surface as a window to the subject´s interior life, a creative catharsis and another reality of nature experimented through the infrared photography. The film combines the old 4:3 format, with vintage lenses, and the last IR Spectrum filter OLPF that passes only near infra-red beyond 729 nm, underscoring the old mixed with the new technology. The “visible” spectrum, probably the most well-known of human sensory limitations as the human eye is only capable of perceiving light at wavelengths between 390 and 750 nanometers. Of course, calling it the “visible” spectrum is a bit of a misnomer, as plenty of animals are capable of perceiving light with frequencies outside this relatively narrow band of electromagnetic radiation.

Country: United States

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Fashion Film Festival Milano 2023