Belleza (Beauty)
2014 · 10m · Italia
Directed by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
An examination of some of the emotions of life, from birth to death, from love to sexuality, from pain to fear.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's basically a feelings flowchart set to cinema—which should be insufferable, but Tagliafierro's refusal to land on sentiment keeps it weird enough that I'm not immediately bored by the life-cycle checklist premise.
A formally disciplined essay film that locates itself squarely in the experimental documentary tradition, using restraint and structural clarity to meditate on lived experience with the rigor of genuine philosophical inquiry—the kind of patient, unhurried work that rewards close attention.
The real move here is how Tagliafierro keeps the frame so deliberately composed and still that every micro-shift in image or sound design reads as intentional; that compositional discipline is doing all the emotional heavy lifting on what has to be a modest budget.