by InTrieste
On Feb. 12 at 5 p.m., the Casa del Cinema di Trieste will screen The Identity Dilemma, a 2018 documentary by Sabrina Morena, at Sala Sbisà in Magazzino 26, as part of the program accompanying the exhibition “Volti di donna. Nella Trieste della Belle Époque.”
The 78-minute Italian-Slovenian co-production centers on five women who lived in Trieste in the years surrounding World War I — Pavla Hočevar, Marica Nadlišek Bartol, Elody Oblath, Giuseppina Martinuzzi and Alice Schalek — when the city, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was marked by mounting national tensions. As allegiances hardened, questions of language, culture and belonging took on new urgency.
Morena structures the film around five actresses preparing a stage production about the women’s lives. Drawing on diaries, letters and essays, the performers retrace their subjects’ experiences through archival research and rehearsals, blending theater with historical footage, photographs and contemporary scenes shot across Trieste. The result moves between past and present, suggesting how the dilemmas of identity that shaped the early 20th century continue to resonate in a border city shared by Italy and Slovenia.
Morena, a Trieste-born theater director who has long focused on intercultural dialogue, wrote and directed the film. It was produced by Quasar Multimedia with Bela Film and RTV Slovenia, with support from regional and national cultural institutions.
The exhibition, on view through March 15, features 170 photographs depicting women in Belle Époque Trieste. Additional events in February include guided and theatrical visits and a talk on early 20th-century fashion.
