The prestigious newspaper just published a beautiful article about Veronica's journey, from international-level competitive sailing athlete to actress, writer and filmmaker who has collected awards with her short Polly Pocket. Read the original article in Italian or its English translation below:
Translation:
FROM SAILING TO HOLLYWOOD
Veronica Maccari is garnering amazing successes with her short film Polly Pocket, which deals with sexual diversity.
From sailing and facing the challenges of the sea to the big screen and the judgment of critics and audiences. Veronica Maccari’s career has skyrocketed, going from regattas at the Italian Yacht Club to Hollywood’s film sets, with impressive success. This is demonstrated by the triumphs of her latest short film Polly Pocket, which has already won two prestigious awards and 13 official selections from festivals of the highest regard.
Veronica Maria Maccari is an ex-competitive sailor who was a regular at sailing clubs in Genoa, Sanremo and Imperia. During her childhood she alternated practice on the Liguria waters with international championships in the Optimist and i420 sailing classes. And Veronica herself, she describes herself as a mariner, coming from “the land of pasta, prosciutto and Sophia Lauren - Italy!”
After lowering the sails, Maccari moved to the United States after high school to build a career in the field of acting, a passion that she cultivated with care and rigor, just like an athlete would. On the other side of the ocean, she began a long academic journey that took her to Hampton University, in Virginia, where she was a student-athlete in the sailing team and theater major, to Los Angeles in California, where she graduated in 2018 from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA), with a pit stop in New York, where, aside from attending AMDA, she completed the Studio Acting Conservatory in a year and a half, graduating in February 2017.
In these years of intense study and acting training, aside from sharpening her performance abilities, she worked on writing for stage, film and TV, focusing on short films of which she then played the lead role, such as in Samantha, screened at the 2015 Festival de Cannes, or In Between (2018).
She followed the same script for Polly Pocket, for which, we have to say, Maccari demonstrated her helming skills by taking on the roles of producer, screenwriter and playing the role of the protagonist.
The short film deals with the theme of sexual diversity and gender identity. These are very relevant topics that are addressed by telling the story of a profound friendship between two young women, Pauline (played by Maccari) and Gabby (Ariana Gonzalez). So profound that Pauline finds herself to have feelings for her friend and doesn’t know how to come clean and tell her the truth. Polly Pocket is a delightful film, that is as sweet as it is sharp and tragic, due to the subject matter it deals with and the emotional complexities it investigates. The story revolves around the problem of how a young woman can confess to her best friend that she has fallen in love with her. We move along the line between platonic affection and desire, within a friendship that is complex, contradictory and intense – as only female friendships can be. A story that brings together a multitude of individual experiences, of women or men, who find themselves face to face with their feelings and the complexity and difficulty in communicating them to whom they are close to, because they break the barriers that society has built overtime. The film’s shoot ended just in time for gay pride month, a celebration that shakes people’s consciences and challenges society’s ideas of love and sexual identity around the whole world, with marches and festivals that count an ever-growing number of participants, proof that the awareness on this matter has grown and that the young Italian writer and actress’s short film has been understood and appreciated.
Maccari is satisfied and, understandably, astonished of the success she is gaining: “We are incredibly grateful for the enthusiasm that our film is being received with – she comments –. With this project I wanted to examine the subjects of affection, love, friendship and sexuality in the female landscape, without any pretension or element of spectacle. I wanted the story to break your heart in its ordinariness, sans melodrama. I’m happy that the festival judges are recognizing the value in this type of storytelling and content”.
Words that explain well the content and style of her piece, which is collecting a level of praise that would have been hard to predict for a young woman facing the big world of entertainment.
By her side in this production, for the most part female, there is the director Maria Corso, executive producer Nicole Campbell and editor Gretty Camaraza. The prestigious international prizes that the short film has recently won are: Honorable Mention for Best Actress in an Independent Film from the Los Angeles Film Awards and the Award of Merit for Best Woman Filmmakers from The Best Shorts Film Competition. Maccari was also nominated for Best Actress by the Phlagraean Film Festival (Naples) and finalist at the Corti in Cortile Film Festival (Catania), Florence Film Awards (Florence), Short+Sweet Hollywood Film Festival (Los Angeles) and semi-finalist at the Directed by Women NYC Film Festival (New York). Polly Pocket was also selected by many other American festivals, such as the Aphrodite Film Awards, Indie Short Fest, Kaleidoscope LGBTQ+ Film Festival and Northeast Film Festival.
Who knows this field knows that these film festivals reward artists that, in film, television, videography and new media, demonstrate exceptional craftsmanship and creativity, contributing to social advancement, and that the entries are judged by highly qualified professionals in the film and television industry, guaranteeing that the awards are reserved to true talents. Therefore, Maccari’s enthusiasm is understandable since by winning a Best Shorts Award, she joins the ranks of other high-profile winners of this internationally respected award that included Disney Interactive for Vinlymation: A Love Story and Oscar-winning production Mr. Hublot from Laurent Witz from Luxembourg. The Best Shorts Competition chairman himself, Rick Prickett, highlights the difficulty in coming out at the top in his own festival asserting: “It is not an easy award to win. Entries are received from around the world from powerhouse companies to remarkable new talent. The level of competition in Best Shorts enables us to set a high standard for quality and creativity. The judges were pleased with the exceptional level of the films in the festival. The goal of Best Shorts is to help the winners achieve the recognition they deserve.”
The next screening of Polly Pocket at the end of the October in Little Rock, Arkansas at the Kaleidoscope LGBTQ+ Film Festival. While the Italian actress and filmmaker is currently on the Hollywood stages, in one of the lead roles of Shakespeare’s play King Lear, produced by Dean Productions. To watch Polly Pocket’s trailer and for more information visit veronicamariamaccari.com/polly-pocket or contact the actress directly at veronicamariamaccari@gmail.com.