Directed by Carmen Trocker • Documentary • 2024 • 93 minutes
PERSONALE is set at a four-star hotel in northeastern Italy — a luxurious spot in the Dolomite Mountains, where guests come to ski, swim, and relax. But instead of the scenery, the film focuses on the unseen: the housekeeping staff who are at the bottom of the hotel hierarchy, and whose work is absolutely essential.
Filmed over six weeks, PERSONALE is a snapshot of behind-the-scenes intensity, punctuated by the repetitive rhythms and hard physical labor of washing, folding, scrubbing, and changing bedding. Glimpses of the workers’ personal lives and challenges emerge too: a Ukrainian refugee from the war, who often seems on the verge of tears. Two Russian-speaking women comparing notes on how to maintain their manicures. Muslims discussing the challenges of Ramadan.
Housekeeping is understaffed, and the workers commiserate over workload and time off. But they also bicker, argue over who cleans the toilets, and break off into their own language groups. A well-run hotel is an immaculate world of its own. PERSONALE immerses us in the view few guests ever see.
Up Next in New: Documentaries
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A Poem For Little People
Directed by Ivan Sautkin • Documentary • 2024 • 86 minutes
Through its two parallel plotlines, the film follows the exploits of a volunteer evacuation team in the front lines of Eastern Ukraine, led by young, precociously stoic Anton, as well as the wartime daily lives and unlikely friendship of...
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Rule of Two Walls
Directed by David Gutnik • Documentary • 2023 • 77 minutes
RULE OF TWO WALLS is an intimate look at the war in Ukraine, as seen through the eyes of Ukrainian artists who remained in their country to make art as a defiant act in the face of aggression.
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Far Out: life on & after the commune
Directed by Charles Light • Documentary • 2024 • 85 minutes
Far Out: Life On & After the Commune tells the story of two rural New England communal farms. The film traces fifty years in the lives of a group of New England writers, activists and artists. It conveys not only how these “hippies” tra...
