Samantha Casella, from movie Katabasis: to new projects

Katabasis is the latest film by Samantha Casella, marking the third installment in her Subconscious Trilogy. 

Pluripremiated Italian director Samantha Casella explores the human intimate in her new film Katabasis, portraying in a dreamlike form a daily reality that is blinding, harsh, decadent, or destined to fail. From her directing thesis at Giuseppe Ferlito’s Immagina Film School to the award-winning production Katabasis, which is the second feature of the Subconscious Trilogy.

Look at the images from the movie Katabasis

In Katabasis, Aron (Francesco Leone) is a young star who has a secret relationship with Nora (Samantha Casella), twenty years his senior, whose existence is known only to those around the majestic villa where they live. The house-prison becomes the stage for secrets, lies, deceit, and hypocrisy. The disdain a cynical manager holds for Nora seems supported by a dark past revealed through ambiguous characters, oppressed by inconsolable pain, threatening the fragile balance between Aron and Nora.

Samantha Casella in Katabasis seeks emotions, explores them, and conveys them through a futuristic directing style. She does not pursue the linearity of a reality often empty but captures the dreamlike and surreal aspects of daily life. Her direction invites introspection, a deep search for one’s nature, and even transformation, hoping to revive a lost magic. While her previous film Santa Guerra shaped trauma and externalized it, Katabasis confronts abuse by showing the inner struggles of a woman who became a persecutor after being a victim. “I was not interested in showing a woman as a victim, but as someone who became a sort of executioner, willing to put herself before everything and everyone to survive,” she states.

“Often what we do in life is an imperfect copy, lacking color and pathos, of what we thought or dreamed as children. For this reason, life often lacks not only external but also internal perfection,” Casella responds when asked how she manages to create evocative and dreamlike direction on screen. “Trying to translate a thought into images, mixing the inner hemisphere with the outer, is a challenge that allows me to continue reading inside myself a pure, uncontaminated aspect that comes from my childhood.”

Katabasis has achieved success at various international festivals, winning Best Emerging Director and the Starlight Innovative Direction Award at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. Other awards include Best Narrative Feature, Best Actress, and Best Cinematography – Outstanding Achievement Award at the New York International Cult Film Festival, as well as Best Experimental Feature Film and Best Actress at the London Movie Awards.

Currently, Samantha Casella is working on her next production, titled La tenerezza del serpente (The Tenderness of the Serpent): “I am almost finished filming the movie that closes the Subconscious Trilogy. It is perhaps my most violent and at the same time sentimental film. It addresses the theme of eternal return through a love bond between two women that includes both maternal and sexual aspects.”