Skip to main content
Real film image; woman filming herself with iPhone in a tripod

Real

Spectrum

This event has passed

In the C21st, our relationship with reality has become increasingly informed by developments in virtual worlds. Adele Tulli’s documentary examines our digital dependence through a cast of characters who live chronically online. A man in Seoul delivers food for an app and live streams his shift from his bike, a young woman strips on a live chat before performing a song for her followers, and a group of influencers commit to moving on from uploading videos with varying levels of conviction…

Tulli exploits the modern world’s ubiquitous cameras to explore multitudes of visual modes and lenses: phones, CCTV, 360° stereoscopic cameras, webcams, and drones. The uncanny world below a 3D city in Google Earth is matched with the alien, geometric landscapes inside the eyes of a robot vacuum. While Real sounds like an elegy for a simpler time, a finale at a genderqueer rave in a VR nightclub questions whether technology is a barrier to connection or a bridge to a deeper shared experience.

 

Media Partner

Director
Credits
Country of Origin

Italy/France

Year

2024

Language

In English, German, Korean and Italian with English subtitles

18+
83 min
Documentary
Pepito Produzioni, FilmAffair, Rai Cinema, Luce Cinecittà

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Valeria Adilardi, Laura Romano

Producer

Agostino Saccà, Valeria Adilardi, Laura Romano, Luca Ricciardi, Mauro Vicentini

Screenwriter

Adele Tulli

Cinematography

Clarissa Cappellani, Francesca Zonars

ANIM

Gianluca Abbate

Editor

Ilaria Fraioli, Adele Tulli

Original Music

Andrea Koch

Adele Tulli headshot; Real director

Adele Tulli

Born in Rome in 1982, Adele Tulli is a film director and researcher, exploring innovative documentary forms and essayistic film practices. Following an MA in Documentary at Goldsmiths and a PhD in Audiovisual Studies at Roehampton University, she also teaches non-fiction and experimental cinema. Tulli’s works have been screened and exhibited internationally at the Berlinale, the Lincoln Center in NY, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, and the ICA in London, among others.

Filmography: 365 Without 377 (2011); Rebel Menopause (2014); Normal (2019)

Photo by Alessandro Crinari

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

The Godfather

Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
175 min

A family saga in more senses than one, Francis Coppola's enthralling gangster opus aims to chronicle the American experience through the twentieth century. It is both a success story and a study of moral corruption.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Shoplifters

Dir. Kore-eda Hirokazu
121 min

A Palme d'or winner in 2018, Shoplifters is both a hard-edged and heartwarming drama about a makeshift family of impoverished urchins and orphans in contemporary Tokyo.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Samia

Dir. Yasemin Şamdereli
102 min

Despite growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the civil war, Samia Yusuf Omar persists in her dream of becoming an Olympic athlete and competes in Beijing, 2008 -- with London, 2012 next on her agenda. Based on a true story.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Melancholia

Dir. Lars von Trier
135 min

Lars von Trier squares up to the end times with this grandly luxuriant but surprisingly punky sci-fi, set in an imposing country mansion house, where Justine (Kirsten Dunst) blows up what's supposed to be the happiest day of her life.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Sudan, Remember Us

Dir. Hind Meddeb
78 min

A portrait of young artists and activists, Meddeb's doc charts events in Khartoum between 2019 -- in the immediate wake of the revolution that deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir -- and the mood four years later, when the country has been torn apart by civil war.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Missouri Breaks

Dir. Arthur Penn
126 min

This exuberant, wild and wooly western from Arthur Penn features a brazenly transgressive performance from Marlon Brando, while Jack Nicholson underplays masterfully as the cattle rustler he's been hired to eliminate.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema