MILAN — Miuccia Prada continues to fuel the conversation with women on women through her Miu Miu Women’s Tales.
The latest short film, “El Affair Miu Miu” directed by Argentine film director and producer Laura Citarella, is the 28th commissioned from a female director under the brand’s series.
It will be premiered at the Venice Film Festival’s “Giornate degli Autori” on Saturday, along with a screening of the 27th episode, “I Am the Beauty of Your Beauty, I Am the Fear of Your Fear” by Chui Mui Tan.
“El Affair Miu Miu” will then be available on Miu Miu digital channels and on Mubi globally from Sept. 27.
“I had to learn how to film outfits,” admitted Citarella, referring to the brand’s clothes and the role they play in the detective story, as she takes an Italian model to the Argentine Pampas in the city of Trenque Lauquen for a Miu Miu fashion campaign in Latin America. “It was necessary to find a connection between fashion and storytelling, by melting the fantastic Pampas landscape and the world of Miu Miu, where the clothes are part of the fiction as main character.”
Exploring “female Sherlock Holmes” figures who try and solve the puzzle of “women that, for different reasons, run away,” Citarella said “the important thing is that stories always manifest the time they need to be told.”
In the film, when the model goes missing after the shoot, the all-women detectives of the town investigate the disappearance following the clues, finding pieces of the Miu Miu clothes she was wearing, to try and trace the model’s path in the countryside.
A still from “El Affair Miu Miu.”
Citarella admitted an obsession with women who are “keener for adventures than anything else.”
In addition to the screening, which will be followed by an event at Ca’ Corner della Regina, the Venetian home of Fondazione Prada, a two-day conversation program will take place on Sunday and Monday at the Hotel Excelsior at the Lido, once again hosted by Penny Martin, writer and editor in chief of “The Gentlewoman,” bringing together Miu Miu Women’s Tales directors and advisers to discuss the contemporary environment for female filmmaking.
The Miu Miu Women’s Tales series was introduced in 2011. Cinema has long been a passion of Miuccia Prada‘s, who has been allowing women directors to speak up and offer their points of view, remaining one of the only consistent commissioning platforms exclusively for female filmmakers.
Last year the 26th Miu Miu Women’s Tales film, “Stane,” was unveiled at the Venice Film Festival, directed by Croatian filmmaker, writer and producer Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović.
A still from “El Affair Miu Miu.”
Also last year, to further amplify and solidify the program, supporting rising talent in the film industry, nominating future directors, and to further ensure visibility for the series across channels and online, the Italian brand established the new Miu Miu Women’s Tales Committee.
The committee comprises cofounding members Miuccia Prada and Prada Group talent relations special projects director Verde Visconti; award winning “Selma” director, writer and producer Ava DuVernay, who directed the fifth Women’s Tales; Australian costume, production and set designer Catherine Martin, who won two Academy Awards for “Moulin Rouge!” in 2002 and another two for “The Great Gatsby” in 2014, and American actress, writer and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, a friend of the house who fronted the fall 2004 ad campaign for the brand.
Miu Miu’s cultural approach further expanded with the brand’s inaugural Literary Club “Writing Life,” a two-day event spotlighting the work of the late Italian writers and poets Aleramo and De Céspedes during the Salone del Mobile in Milan in April. As reported, the goal was to promote literature and the arts with a schedule of talks, readings and live music performances to evoke the spirit of literary salons and artist collectives of yore.