Runtime: ​11 min 26 seconds 

​

​Summary:

Summer of Fellini is a surrealist film that paints a portrait of the Giraffe Sisters’ experience growing up together as artists and individuals against the backdrop of their parents’ chaotic relationship. The film stars the directors, Nicola and Juliana, as themselves, alongside their actual parents, Monica and Mark. Set to an original score composed and produced by the directors’ boyfriends, Max Whipple and Greg Hartunian, the film unfolds like a ballet, where through a series of poetic and symbol-laden vignettes, Juliana and Nicola reimagine their origin story—from conception and birth to individuation. That being said, Summer of Fellini is a film that plays like a dream and should be interpreted by the individual viewer as such.

​

​

Director’s Statement: 

In the summer of 2023, we embarked on a trip to Europe with a suitcase full of black clothes, a wig for our mother, horn-rimmed glasses for our father, and the lingering impression of a recent viewing of La Dolce Vita. What transpired was a therapeutic dive into the soul of our creative processes, leaving us with a deeper understanding of ourselves as both artists and human beings.

Created out of necessity to survive a family holiday, we shot Summer of Fellini in a stream-of-consciousness manner over the course of a month spent with our parents in Portugal, Spain, and England. Filmed without a script or crew, we revisited our early directorial roots—making films on childhood trips to escape the often chaotic reality of our parents' estranged relationship. In making this film, now as adult women alongside our parents, we were offered the cathartic release and unique opportunity to be fully present and connected to one another in service of something greater, the experience calling upon Steiner’s line from La Dolce Vita: “We need to live in a state of suspended animation, like a work of art, in a state of enchantment. We have to succeed in loving so greatly that we live outside of time, detached.”