ONDINA QUADRI

Actress

Ondina Quadri was born in Fiesole in 1994 and is an Italian actress, She grew up in Rome where she studied drums and played around squat and pubs with her rock band. In 2002 began her interest in the theatre and she started working for the Santarcangelo International Theatre Festival. Since 2013, to acclaim, she has been making films such as Amori e Metamorfosi, 2014 by the French-Israeli director Yanira Yariv, Arianna, 2014 by the director Carlo Lavagna and most recently the 2016 Swiss production IL NIDO by Klaudia Reynicke.

“At Side by Side I am presenting a film that deeply changed the course of my life. The film is talking about identity and it was a very strong experience to act in it. The freedom which we have to define ourselves is linked to a rigid conception of what and what is not possible. There are some boxes which are definable, readable and identifiable and within those we have the right to insert ourselves. The difficulty is to realise that these boxes are fictional ideas, simplifications which can not represent us totally. There are some truths which are taken for granted and precisely because they are taken for granted, they become, in the end, oppression. With this film we tried to show that it is possible to exist outside of the box and not have the desire to exist within another. It is a film that talks about the discovery of oneself and the fight for self-determination.”

PRESENTER

ALISA TAYOZHNAYA

Film Critic | Journalist

Alisa writes about cinema and contemporary culture for The Village, Wonderzine, Afisha, Interview, and GQ. She runs the Youth & Truth film club and lectures on the history of cinema and art. A graduate of the Higher School of Economics and the Manege/MediaArtLab Open School, she has studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague and Anatoly Osmolovsky’s BAZA Institute.