Federico Tocchella (Rome, Italy, 1979) is a director, animator and independent producer. He graduated from Dipartimento di Animazione at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Turin in 2005.
In 2007 Tocchella founded TFILM, a movie firm whose mission is to promote and support artistic research in the field of cinema, based on ongoing experimentation and a mix of styles and techniques: cinema, animation and video-art.
His short films have been presented at the most important festivals and won various national and international awards, besides being recognised as items of national cultural interest and also produced with the support of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Tax Credit Cinema and Fondo Audiovisivo Regione Lazio. At the moment, Tocchella is working on his first full-length film “Sotto la Notte”.
From 2006 to 2011 he taught at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Dipartimento di Animazione. In 2012, he was didactic coordinator and professor at the Scuola di Cinema Gian Maria Volontè in Rome. Since 2016 he has been teaching at RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts.
WORK ON DISPLAY
Isacco, 2015
video 2k, color, 15′
In the short film Isacco (2015), cinema, animation and video-art meld to enact, from an original perspective, the great biblical narrative of the “Offering of Isaac”.
The event is recalled by a child who is immersed in a ‘symbolic game’ at the park with his plasticine dolls. In the continual wavering between fiction and animation, the humoristic and dramatic register, epic and everyday settings, the story develops and takes form, culminating in a final climax.
The work explores topics such as the relationship between father and son, trust and betrayal, and investigates feelings such as fear and dismay. Above all, it especially testifies to the ability of exorcising irrational and atavic ‘fears and tremblings’, which lie at the core of humanity and which also moves through imagination and fictional narrative.
