SEA BOUNDARY (working title)
a documentary by ROSSELLA SCHILLACI (HDCAM 55' - in post production)
author and director ROSSELLA SCHILLACI - production AZUL, CLAC in collaboration with LARANJA AZUL (Catarina Mourão - Portugal), with the support of SICILIA FILM COMMISSION, PIEMONTE DOC FILM FUND
LOGLINE> Located at the opposite sides of Italy, Portopalo and Turin are two of many landfalls for African migrants escaping from war and misery.
From Eastern Sicily's coast, where landings take place, to the home occupied by 300 migrants in Turin, this documentary will show migrant's life history from three different perspectives: the one of the Coast Guard, the fishermen and the migrants themselves.
NOTE OF INTENTION OF THE DIRECTOR> The idea for this documentary was born on board of a Coast Guard ship during the production of a television series broadcasted by Sky Television.
The complex manoeuvre of docking, the tension during night navigations, and the technological instruments on the boat deck represented elements of great fascination.
Listening to the sailors recounting stories of their experiences of rescuing immigrants struck a very human cord: their satisfaction, their emotions, but also their frustrations that emerged resulting from the difficulties presented by the “rigidity” that goes with the uniform.
Last summer the “immigration emergency” was a recurring theme in television news with the usual bulletins of immigrants lost at sea along our coastline.
None of the bulletins, however, managed to give information which explored further the conditions during the voyages, their duration, their motivations, their difficulties, and in particular how pregnant women and children manage to endure such journeys.
It was only by going to those places that it was possible for me to realise what is really happening, and it was only by talking to the people involved (workers, local journalists, lawyers, police, fishermen) that helped open my eyes and allow me to begin to understand.
The narrative construction of the documentary will be dictated by the sequence of events to be filmed during the Winter in Turin city in the old clinic, and during Summer in the southern coast of Sicily.
At the crux of the story will be the characters themselves.
Leaving ample space for their self representation, the film aims to capture their most intimate sides, highlighting their ironic and poetic aspects, and allowing the audience to fall in love with them.
The approach will be one typical of observational cinema: an up close and participative observation sustained by the empathy between the observer and the observed.
SYNOPSIS> The village of Portopalo di Capo Passero (with the exception of Lampedusa) forms the extreme geographical limit of Sicily, and lies further south even than Tunisia. Here, where the turbulent waters of the Ionian Sea meet the Mediterranean, until last year was also the political boundary of the European Union.
For those who live in the area surrounding Portopalo the reality however, is not different from Lampedusa. There still exists an invisible line between the two worlds, with their cultures and lifestyles often irreconcilable. The imposing of a political barrier has in some ways given rise to a “moat” between continental Europe and Mediterranean Europe, between a law abiding culture and public security of the continent, and the solidarity typical of the Mediterranean costal communities.
Very few of the vast numbers of stories emerging from the printed and TV news involve the men and women who live on the confines of Europe and Africa. The fishermen, the Italian Coast Guards, the immigrants themselves: what does this tract of water represent to them? What does this invisible barrier mean to the immigrants? How are their voyages realised, with which boats? For how many days and nights are they at the mercy of the sea? What motivations and aspirations power the so called “wrecks of the sea”?
In Turin, the city that has been the symbol of the working class, there is an old abandoned clinic occupied since November 2008 by more than 300 migrants. Close to the city centre between a cinema and a street market this building is now inhabited by Somali and Sudanese refugees, who have landed few month ago in Sicily. There is no water and heating inside while connection to electricity is unstable and inevitably abusive.
Some of them, especially young men and women are willing to build here an alternative to their life, attending start-up courses for work and studying Italian language. It is their determination to change their life story, it is the strength of this young community to enliven the squalid and cold interior of the clinic, furnished with mattresses thrown to the ground and a few belongings.
WORKSHOP / PITCHING / CO-PRODUCTION FORUM
GREEK DOCUMENTARY LAB FOR CO-PRODUCTIONS 2009 - Athens (Greece)
DOC LISBOA 2009 - Lisbon (Portugal)
EUROPEAN DAYS CO-PRODUCTION FORUM 2009 - Torino (Italy)
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