Erica Moriconi
Overripe

Overripe (2025) by Erica Moriconi is a complex, slow-paced and tender short film. Erica presents a story where wonder and boredom meet, two stimuli that rarely go hand in hand. She places these non-overlapping experiences in the same grocery store, closed to the outside world.

The film begins with a shopping trolley. A fragile, delicate peach rolls back and forth over the metal grates. We know its skin will tear and bruise. In shops, fruit is carefully displayed in an unnatural way. Their constant visual repetition in the shop shelves, makes their fragility disappear. Erica's beautiful graphic world and slow animated timing reinforce that narrative. The hairs on our arms, the hairs on the skin of the peach slowly stand up.

Robbe Vervaeke
What is it about fruit and vegetable that captures your attention?

Produce has fascinated me for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve ever been able to pin down exactly why. Fruits and vegetables feel like perfect things. They’re little worlds, capsules of color and veins. They are gifts. They are objects but they’re not manmade, they’re crafted by nature and in a lot of ways that process is out of our control. They embody life in their own way, similar but different to humans.

It makes them a good slate to project a story onto. For Overripe, I connected the fragility of fruit to the emotional fragility of people. Leaving a peach to rot feels a lot like abandoning ourselves to loneliness. Decomposition is inevitable, and a necessary part of feeding the life cycle. Fruit reminds me that embracing connection over imperfection is a nourishing force.

RV
In the middle of production, you adjusted your film. Can you give us some insight in why,and how you came to these decisions.

The decision to adjust my film came down to time constraints. I completed my Master in one year, so my plate was immensely full. I originally hoped to pull off a more ambitious film, but with such a tight schedule there needed to be a compromise. The original cut is a lot more sprawling, exploring different corners of the supermarket and what lurks there. I wanted to be able to explore this universe to its fullest extent with feedback from my mentors and peers. It’s rare outside of academia to be able to throw myself into an intense project like this. The sprawling nature of the film also made its structure very modular. So, I had it in the back of my mind that realistically it would be necessary to edit a lot out. I took as much time during production as possible to see the full universe come together, but about a month before the film was due, I reduced the edit dramatically. The scenes that remain were always the emotional core of the film; the most grounded in reality. It was important to me to deliver something cohesive and finished, knowing that I also achieved my larger goal of laying the groundwork of establishing a larger universe.

RV
You are an international student, joining us from Boston, USA. Can you give us some insights in studying here?

There is a lot of flexibility at KASK & Conservatorium, which is well suited to how self-directed the program is. I took a break from studying for a while, and it was nice to really launch myself into the work I wanted to do in the way that comes natural to me. The higher education environment in the United States is very different from Europe — I enjoy it, but for better or worse it doesn’t have that same fluidity. That lack of structure (in Europe ed.) can be challenging for a newcomer, though. I’m proud of myself that I was able to finish what I set out to do, but it did cost me a sense of balance. It was a major test of perseverance. Moving abroad to make a film about loneliness was also maybe not the kindest thing to do to myself (oops.)

RV
What is next for you?

The nice thing about leaving so much on the cutting room floor with Overripe is that my next step feels tangible. I’m determined to bring the rest of my supermarket to life. One of the most intimidating things about graduating is that it can feel like losing a creative compass — at least that’s how I felt after my Bachelor — so I feel grateful that I can build on my current momentum. I’m not sure how exactly that will play out in the future, but I am excited to keep reaching for it.