Liryc Dela Cruz is invited to autonomously inhabit the Atelier spaces at La Pelanda throughout the entire duration of the festival, with openings both within and beyond the programme—following the free flow of his residency: a land in a land.
A Land in a Land
Liryc Dela Cruz x Short Theatre 2025
«Before we belonged to nations, we belonged first and always to the earth itself.»
A Land in a Land is a porous terrain, a playground and a space of encounter, where care, resistance, and imagination unfold across film, performance, and multi-sensorial installation. Conceived by Liryc Dela Cruz, this experimental residency reflects on landmaking, queer longing, and the invisible architectures built by people who live across borders, remake home in different possibilities, and trace belonging in fleeting spaces.
Rooted in Liryc’s works-in-progress like A Peruvian Party (film), a celebration that never materializes but lingers in the air and I Want to Sleep Peacefully Outside Tonight (installation and performance) a poetic and meditative inquiry into how migrant rest unsettles the indifference of cities that refuse shelter; the project draws inspiration from the lived geographies of Rome’s migrant communities. It listens to those who sleep in public parks, under trees, beside construction sites: moments of rest that become ephemeral rituals of presence, tenderness, and refusal. In these acts, another kind of land is made.
A Land in a Land is also a sensorial invitation. To summon the monsoon over Parco Sangalli. To imagine a mango tree taking root in Parco degli Acquedotti, planted by a hand from elsewhere. To let memory seep into soil, and longing becomes landscape. To gather in the dark and call it shelter.
Voice Marco Palmieri
Liryc Dela Cruz is a filmmaker and artist from South Cotabato, Philippines, currently based between Rome and Paris. His work moves across fiction, documentary, installation, and performance, rooted in the intimate geographies of labour, migration, and postcolonial memory. Through contemplative cinema, decolonial aesthetics, and collective authorship, Dela Cruz explores the invisible architectures of care, hospitality, and refusal—often centring the lived experiences of Filipino domestic and care workers in Europe.
His debut feature Come la Notte (Where the Night Stands Still) premiered at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival (Perspectives) and has since been screened internationally. He was recently awarded the Golden Goblet Award – Best Director (Asian New Talent) at the 27th Shanghai International Film Festival.
Dela Cruz’s works have been presented and performed at, among others, the Locarno Film Festival, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Santarcangelo Festival, Mattatoio in Rome, Venice Biennale, and Film at Lincoln Center. He is the founder of Pelircula and a member of Collettivo Il Mio Filippino, a transdisciplinary platform for collaborative practices of memory and resistance. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Art Explora – Cité internationale des arts in Paris, where he is developing his second feature film alongside a series of installations and performances.