A Body Made of Others is a documentary film born from a place of encounter.

Set within the Altrefrontiere Dance Festival, the film depicts what happens when people from different backgrounds, cultures, and paths choose to spend time together through a shared practice of movement, listening, and presence. What brings them together is not a single technique or aesthetic, but a common curiosity about the body as a place of research — where thought, emotion, memory, and action meet.

Altrefrontiere was created from the desire to break down borders: those between disciplines, cultures, body and mind, self and other. In this context, dance is not treated as a form to master, but as a language that exists before words — a way of communicating that allows differences to coexist without needing to be explained. Like music, it reaches people directly.

Over the course of two weeks, participants live closely: they train, eat, rest, talk, doubt, fall, discover and move together. The film does not follow individual protagonists. Instead, it stays with the collective — with the subtle shifts that occur when people are exposed to one another over time.

Connections form quickly. Resistance appears. Vulnerability surfaces. Balance is learned through falling. What seemed separate begins to merge.

This sixth edition unfolds in a moment of transition — both for the festival and for the world around it. In a time marked by social and political upheaval, A Body Made of Others listens to the need for action that does not start outside, but within. Movement becomes a way of setting things in motion: of loosening inner and outer barriers, of reconnecting the spiritual and the material, of allowing what has been waiting to emerge to finally take shape.

More than a portrait of a dance festival, this film is an observation of a human process. It is about how we recognize ourselves through others, how change passes through the body, and how being together — attentively, honestly — can be, today more than ever, a radical act.

Directed and edited by Joana Cordeiro Ferreira
Visuals by Guillemette Dur & Joana Cordeiro Ferreira
Concept by Luciana Lusso Roveto & Angelica Isenarda Proietti