
FILM REVIEW
2024
DOVECOTE
SHORT FILM
★★★★★
Dir. Marco Perego
Writers. Alexander Dinelaris · Marco Perego
20 October, 2024
What do we sacrifice for our freedoms? Does freedom equate to life? Marco Perego’s short film DOVECOTE explores the intimacy discovered between women in Guidecca Women’s prison in Venice as one prisoner, Zoë Saldana, is about to be released. It’s a wordless opera, a tragedy of society that powerfully explores what freedom means and the personal struggle for redemption, forgiveness, and hope.
Within its opening scene, there is a mix of sounds that bring on a feeling of calm as water gently splashes against the side of a police officer's gondola and the squawks from a seagull, that terror of the skies. It evokes a sublime beauty that can only come from a place of wonder, history, and experience. There is a crips calmness that the early morning brings. It offers a moment of solitude, a chance to appreciate quiet contemplation before the noise of the day engulfs the senses. The police officer steers his gondola through the narrow Venetian canals, looking up towards the sea-blue sky, offering him a hit of transcendent beauty. One can’t help but feel his sense of reflection.
Inside Guidecca, 80+ women have to live in cramped rooms with no expectation of privacy. As we meet Saldana’s character for the first time, there is a heavy sigh that doesn’t abate the impact of what today means. The movement is heavy, burdened, and filled with trepidation. Perhaps the redemptions she’s needed have come from the women she is now being forced to leave, or perhaps she’s reluctant to face the reality of what freedom means. Saying goodbye to these women is having to accept that she has to face the world, but is she ready for this next step? Great care has been taken by Perego and his team to ensure that the women in the prison are treated with dignity and respect. The film crew has used their medium as storytellers to give back to these women their humanity that the system had taken away from them. This can be seen in the way the women interact with Saldana and how they, through multiple scenes, allowed a realism of their prison life to be captured without trying to paint a softer, less authentic picture.

Sabastián Kauderer’s music plays an essential part in DOVECOTE, and Saldana’s movement is tethered to it seamlessly. Though the music came after the film was shot, its placement and Kauderer’s use of bold and gentle stings to truly give every frame of the film emotional depth are stunningly realised. The music is complimented by Javier Julia’s cinematography and tied together by Andrew Leven’s editing to create a short film that any feature film released this year would be envious of.
A short film is about building a creative team who can connect with what the writer and director are trying to say. There is always little time to plan or rehearse, and even less so when you’re making a film that’s shot on location in a fully operational prison. And yet Oscar-winning writer Alexander Dinelaris and Perego found their key team of players who didn’t just realise their vision but did so with so much care. Julia’s camera, at times, becomes a fly buzzing around the rooms, soaking up everything it sees, and between Julia and Kauderer, a dance unfolds.
They capture life. They capture this tortured, somewhat forgotten life that fails to be beaten. In one scene particular, as Saldana’s character has emotionally said her goodbyes, a girl runs into a room and fumbles to open up a wooden box. As she runs out, she wades through a sea of women, young and old, until she disappears within them as they stand there, motionless. Some looking forward, others with their eyes burning through the lens—it is a powerful moment that captures the very real essence of what these women have lost, but equally who these women are.
The director asks his audience to stop and watch—watch how lives can be ruined by the system, but look at how the human spirit can still find beauty in even the bleakest of places. We don’t judge these women; we have no idea who they are, but they become all the women in our lives. Perego and Dinelaris writing isn’t sentimental; it strikes a perfect balance, and there is no judgement placed on any of the women. This is beautifully and painfully illustrated towards the end when Saldana's character is walking towards her freedom and another woman is being brought in, set to lose hers. The repetative cycle of these institutions is disheartening, where there should be joy, for Saldana’s character Perego shows us that there is a guaranteed one-in-one-out system at play. With tears in her eyes, the police officer proceeds to search her, stripping her of her dignity and humanity. Fear is growing, unsure of what lies beyond the doors or the people she’s going to meet. We don’t know where she’s come from or what she’s done, but we can’t help but feel empathy for her.

"Sitting on a bench she has a choice to make, and it’s the uncertainty of this choice that is filled with so much hope."
By the end, Saldana’s character is left with a choice: life or death, live or die. In life, we pay a price for freedom, though some have to pay a lot more than others. Imprisonment may offer some rest to a societal and political elite who think that the only way to deal with people who break societies moral codes and laws is prison, but what is the true cost? Sitting on a bench she has a choice to make, and it’s the uncertainty of this choice that is filled with so much hope.
There is something special about short films that can at times be hard to put into words. The first short film I saw, TREVOR (1994), screened late on Channel 4 when I was a teenager, had a profound impact on my life. But the reality is, unless you’re attending a film festival or special screening, short films don’t really get much of a wider public release. It’s even stranger when you realise that every filmmaker from Spielberg to Campion comes from the short film world, and yet as Hollywood struggles to ignite the imagination of audiences, the short film world seems to still hold the spark of creativity and insight that audiences are starved of.