At the edge of Rome, at the mouth of the Tiber, the small district of Idroscalo di Ostia juts right out over the sea. The women who live there, such as Franca and her daughters, bear its stories, with the natural force of the site, between wild realism and popular imagination. This sacred point becomes a theatre for the resistance of a community that expresses its right to live there.
Awards
- Best feature film - Visions du Réel
Festivals
Labels & Line Ups
Director's Statement
The idea for the film came about when I started to learn the history of Idroscalo, where I ended up for the first time seven years ago. It made me angry that this place and its people weren’t being portrayed as they really are and only being shown in a negative light (...) We filmed over the course of three to four months, for 30 days in all. But we built up our relationship of trust over the course of seven years. I went to all their Christmas celebrations; they give off a very pure energy that’s different to our “urbanised” version, it’s their way of saying “we’re here, we’re proud and we want to celebrate”. I didn’t just want to turn up and switch the camera on; we tried to integrate within the community and gain some understanding of each and every character. It’s an approach that I even applied in the editing process, which was very long
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Press
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A great example of real-life cinema, boasting authenticity and aesthetic vision.
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An inside view of togetherness.
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An ‘Italian favela’ south of Rome is the setting for Francesca Mazzoleni’s poignant documentary
Francesca Mazzoleni
Italy
Essentially, I don't like to feel trapped in a single style. I like to wander through genres, asking myself what we, today, can do to make a story fresher and more personal. In my mind, the more that documentaries and story-based films can interact with one another, the better it is. Stories and characters I love come before everything else.
Francesca Mazzoleni (Catania, 1989), director and screenwriter, graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. She has directed short films, such as IL PREMIO (2014), which won a Silver Ribbon nomination from the Italian Journalists Association, along with 1989 (2015), and documentaries, such as NOWHERE (2015) and BARS (2014) which were awarded in numerous international film festivals. THAT’S LIFE (2018) was her first feature. Her second feature film, PUNTA SACRA (2020), won the Sesterce d' Or La Mobilière for Best Film at Visions du Réel 2020.
