Edition 24: 1–9 August, 2025

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE DOX

El Father Plays Himself

Venezuela, Italy, United Kingdom, United States
2020 — 45' / Color

1

Synopsis

A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the
Amazon jungle. He casts Father to play himself. What starts as an act of love and ambition spirals into a
process which confronts Father’s struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son.

Official Trailer

Directors' Biography

Mo Scarpelli is an Italian-American director and cinematographer of non-fiction and hybrid cinema. Her feature-length films have screened at the Berlinale, IDFA, SXSW, Hot Docs, Durban IFF, BFI London Film Festival, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, FIPADOC, FICCI and others, garnering more than a dozen international jury and audience awards. Her last film ANBESSA was nominated for both the Crystal Bear and Glashütte Documentary Prize at the 69th Berlinale, and broadcast on ARTE/ZDF in France and Germany. Mo is a selection of Berlinale Talents and has received fellowships from the New America Foundation and the International Women in Media Foundation. She is based in Rome.

Directors

Mo Scarpelli

Producers

Manon Ardisson

Cinematographers

Mo Scarpelli

Editors

Juan Soto Taborda

Sound

Roberta Ainstein