Documentary film Fuocoammare: Fire at sea became in February this year winning film 66th Film Festival Berlinale. Impressive film won the Golden Bear provides an unprecedented view of the refugee crisis, which monitors rather than classical reporter's eyes, but through the portrait of a young boy living on the island of Lampedusa, which is a transit point thousands of illegal immigrants. Like his fifth feature-length documentary he made the Italian director Gianfranco Rosi, whose previous frame Sacro GRA was historically the first document, who won the main competition at the International Film Festival in Venice.
"This year was full of diverse films. But he impressed us extraordinary size for a single movie that combines political statement with art. This is the heart of the Berlinale, what it is about, "she said during the award ceremony director Gianfranco Rosimu chairwoman of the festival jury Meryl Streep.
About the film
Twelve-Samuel lives on an island in the Mediterranean Sea, far from the mainland. Like all boys his age, he does not always want to school. He would rather climb over rocks, playing with a slingshot or wandering around the harbor. But his home is not like other islands. For years now it's a destination for men, women and children who are trying to get from Africa on ships that are too small and decrepit. This is an island of Lampedusa, which has become a metaphor for escaping refugees to Europe, hope, suffering and fate of hundreds of thousands of emigrants. These people crave peace, freedom and happiness, and yet they are often washed up on shore just their bodies. And so are the residents of Lampedusa daily forced to witness the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our time.
Gianfranco Rosi (1964)
Born in Asmara in Eritrea. After studying at an Italian university in 1985 he moved to New York, where he graduated from NYU film school. Followed by a journey to India, where he produced and directed his first documentary film Boatman (1993), which won the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at Sundance 1994.
In 2008 he won his film Below Sea Level (Below Sea Level) award Orizzonti Award at the Venice festival.
In 2010, he shot assassin - Room 164 (El Sicario - Room 164), a film about a conversation killer who became a police informer. The film won many awards, such as the Venice Film Festival award for best documentary at festivals and DocLisboa Doc Aviv.
In 2013, a film by the master writer Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities Film Sacro GRA, for which Rosi won the first ever documentary maker Golden Lion in Venice.
Gianfranco Rosi:
"The first time I arrived in Lampedusa in the fall of 2014, to see what options are there to make a ten-minute film, which I might point out at international festivals. The producer wanted to make a short, fast film that would introduce Lampedusa from another ceiling than that to which Europe is comfortable that the entire situation your share and whose view of the growing migration crisis was distorted and confused, accustomed. I was no different. For me Lampedusa long represented only a babble of voices and images broadcast on television and shocking headlines in which they wrote about death, emergency, invasion and populist gestures.
But as soon as I arrived on the island, I discovered that the reality is very different from the picture presented by the media and politicians talk, and I realized that it would be impossible to condense such a complicated world, which is Lampedusa, in a few minutes. In order to understand it, it will be necessary to him long and hard plunge. And it will not be easy. I knew I would have to find a way to do it. But as many times
before the documentary was being made even now, something unexpected happened. I went to the local infirmary with acute bronchitis and met the doctor Pietro Bartolo, who, I discovered, was the only doctor on the island, who was present at each landing ship rescued refugees over the past thirty years. He decides who to send to the hospital, to whom a detention center and who is dead.
Doctor Bartolo knew I was the director, who is looking for a story that could shoot, and he told me about his experiences of medical and humanitarian crises. What he said, and the words that he said this touched me deeply. Developed between us mutual understanding, and I realized that it could become a character of my film. After an hour and a half of intense debate turned Doctor Bartolo computer and showed me a heartbreaking pictures that never did not show anyone that I saw with my own eyes the reality of the migration crisis.
At that moment I realized that I have a ten-minute film, which sent me to shoot, make a feature film. When I arrange production support, I moved on Lampedusa and rented a small house in the old port, where I stayed until the end of filming.
I wanted to show the tragedy through the eyes of the islanders, whose perception of the situation and the way of life over the past twenty years radically transformed. With the help of Peppino, guardian angel island, which then became assistant director, I'm gradually getting to know the local people and understand the rhythm of their lives and their view of the situation. And as in the case of Dr. Bartolo and now I met a vital man, nine-Samuel, the son of a fisherman who got me completely. I understand that the pure and original perspective I could tell the story of the island and its inhabitants more freely. I watched him as he plays with his friends at school, at home with his grandmother and uncle on a boat. Thanks to Samuel, I had the opportunity to look at the island through different eyes, and with such clarity that for me was very new, and through him, I gradually, one by one, was another hero of the film.
My decision to move to Lampedusa, everything changed. During the year I spent on the island, I've had a long winter and the season when you can go to sea, and met with a real rhythm in which the migrants come to the island. It was vital that I did not copy the style of work of the media who arrive in Lampedusa only when there is a crisis. Something is happening every day. To understand the real dimension of the tragedy, not enough to just be close, but you have to be in prolonged contact. Just so I could understand the feelings of the islanders who watch the constant repetition of the tragedy twenty years. After having been launched rescue operations, such as Mare Nostrum, which aims to intercept boats at sea, they are not migrants in Lampedusa seen. Going through the island as ghosts. It unloads on the pier in the old port, loaded into buses to detention centers where they receive assistance and identify them, and a few days later, they are sent to the mainland.
Like the landing craft, which I made dozens, it is the only way to see the detention center to go there and see it up close. It is very hard to shoot, but with permission, which I received from the Sicilian authorities, I had the opportunity to show center, its rhythm and rules, its clients and customs, its religion and its tragedy. Around the World, closed daily life of the island. The biggest challenge was to find a way to make this world so that I caught only truth and reality, but also the humanity that rules here.
However, I soon realized that the boundaries that once she was alone Lampedusa when the boats have landed directly on the island, has shifted to the sea. I asked for a permit to enter the Italian boat Cigala Fulgosi, which operates off the African coast, and spent on it for about a month, during which the ship participated in two missions. Here, I learned rhythm, rules and habits of life aboard ship, but we have gradually experienced two tragedies. Filming these situations are impossible to describe.
It is impossible to leave Lampedusa, just as it is impossible to pinpoint the moment when the shooting was over. This is true for all my films, but for this particular. Thanks to one incident, I realized that the circle closes. Given that I had to shoot this film on Lampedusa she decided after a meeting with Dr. Bartolo, I had the feeling that at the end of the film I have to go back to this meeting. I went after him, but this time with the camera, which I turned, I made his testimony, his story. And just like the first, and this time the doctor Barotolo when browsing its archives on the computer that captures twenty years of his work, and due to its immense humanity and peace was able to convey the scale of the tragedy and explain the need to assist and provide shelter. Which was exactly what I conclude my film needed. "
Source: tz