Three Sisters in a Sketchbook: Film screening and discussion with director and scholar Dr Romana Turina, 1st April @4-6 pm

26 Mar 2025

Three Sisters in a Sketchbook (Romana Turina, 2024, 45’) won Best Biographical Film at the Toronto International Women Film Festival 2025 and Best Short Documentary at the LA Independent Film Channel Festival.

Three Sisters in a Sketchbook is a film on silenced history, life writing and auto-ethnography. Focused on divisions created by barriers and borders, it explores the lives of Maria, Eufemia, and Antonia. Born between 1930 and 1936, the three sisters confront their childhood after spending decades apart in culturally and politically diverging countries – with Maria living in Milan (Italy), Antonia in Trieste (once on the Iron Curtain) and Eufemia in Rovinj (once Yugoslavia, then Italy, now Croatia). For each of them, one moment in life determined everything that followed. Narrated with the use of archival material and photos saved from the work of time, the film enters into the private memories of three girls, now in their late eighties, and unveils the dramatic impact of societal rules and history on these three unusual women.

The screening will be followed by a discussion chaired by Professor Laura Rascaroli

Dr Romana Turina (Arts University Bournemouth) is a screenwriter, filmmaker and historian. Recently, she completed the essay film and installation Three Sisters in a Sketchbook (2024), which was awarded Best Biographical Film at the Toronto International Women Film Festival 2025 and Best Short Documentary at the LA Independent Film Channel Festival (November 2024). The film was selected as finalist at Tokyo International Short Film Festival 2025, the LA Independent Women Film Awards 2024, and the Hollywood Independent Filmmaker Awards and Festivals 2024. Romana's creative practice includes the awarded essay films Lunch with Family (2016) and San Sabba (2016), shortlisted at the AHRC Research in Film Awards and awarded at the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards 2018.

Location: Film & Screen Media Auditorium, Kane Building B10B

Date/time: 1^st April @4-6 pm