Making a documentary means being brave. First of all, because of the stories to tell. Uncomfortable or not, moral and intellectual honesty is mandatory. The other very important aspect is being completely unaware of time. There’s no 9 to 5 in documentaries or weeks scheduled or production plan. The story ends when is ended, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. Below Sea Level, the incredible story of a community leaving in a former military base in California without water and electricity took eight years of Gianfranco Rosi‘s life. Just three for Notturno, spent listening and filming tales of broken lives across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Kurdistan. «I wanted to tell stories and people beyond the war» Gianfranco Rosi explains «I was far from the frontline, I shot in places were war is an echo butt strongly immanent, an heavy weight avoiding future. I tried to share the everyday struggling of those living on the edge between life and hell».
The movies of Gianfranco Rosi are made of borders and lines intersecting in many and different ways. The first line starts on river Gange together with his first movie Boatman (1993). El Sicario, Room 164 sets the thin line dividing humanity from madness, just like Joshua Oppenheimer did in The Act of Killing but in a much monstrous scale. The Sacro G.R.A. (2013), first doc feature winning Golden Lion, is not only the border of Rome, eternal in every sense, but also of a stuck social environment. Invisible barriers even in the midst of sea avoiding women, man and children to get a pale hope of a better tomorrow, the stories enclosed in Golden Bear winner Fuocoammare (2016).
Making a documentary means always crossing these lines, physically, often ethically, because showing pain and suffering is necessary but still a matter of boundaries between documentation and voyerism. Gianfranco Rosi exposes humanity without filters and judgement. It’s fair. And it’s not easy.
NOTTURNO
Italy, France, Germany, 2020 Directed by Gianfranco Rosi Runtime 100’
