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LOCARNO 2013

Sangue: journey to the end of pain

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- The only Italian film in competition at the 66th Locarno Film Festival is a personal search for truth: a confrontation between two men who apparently have nothing in common

Sangue: journey to the end of pain

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by Pippo Delbono, the only Italian film in competition at the 66th Locarno Film Festival is, as every work of art should be, a personal search for truth. It is the confrontation between two men who have absolutely nothing in common except for the necessity to give their lives sense by looking at reality without prejudice.

Pippo Delbono and Giovanni Senzani, historical leaders of the red brigades, travel together throughout Italy. It is the journey of two lost men in a world that is just as badly off as they are, a journey through pain because of the loss of the most important women in their lives: Pippo’s mother and Giovanni’s wife. It is a journey through themselves, looking into death’s eyes, which turns out to give meaning to life itself.

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Sangue touches one of Italian history’s raw nerves: that in a divided nation, the same polemics will continue to emerge. The director has much to say on the subject: “in Italy, we prefer lies, but a country that does not want to know its own past, will never be able to understand where it stands. The hypocrisy of false morality in Italy annoys me, especially when it comes to certain subjects. I do not have anything in common with Giovanni’s choices, I think to kill is to kill a part of yourself as well as the revolution you believe in, but I cannot tolerate the falsity of so-called respectability.”

Giovanni Senzani talks about a finished story. “During Prospero Gallinari’s funeral, I saw our ideas, our guerrilla, our armed struggle be buried. I saw all the ex factions from the Red Brigades and not one person from the older generation lifted their fist, not out of cowardice, but because it is a finished story.”

Just like in the tradition of English theatre, a work of art is always political. “The private becomes political, getting rid of everything resembling ideology. A true revolution happens with language, not through the tackled theme.” And the secret of language for Pippo is “in that little camera that enables you to gather extraordinary moments, and to stop them in those necessitous and beautiful ones that give strength and truth to cinema.” 

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