The stories of the people who live alongside the Salerno–Reggio Calabria motorway come to life within an original story spanning the past and the present and revealing a version of southern Italy which is a far cry from stereotypes. Tirrenica by Rosario Minervini bagged a Special Mention in Bif&st “for its poetic and meticulous approach which conveys the invisible life unfolding on the margins, in a monumental work which is full of symbolism and which examines themes of progress, marginalisation and social justice”. We chatted with the director about his movie.

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Cineuropa: How did the idea for the film come about?
Rosario Minervini: The idea came in December 2019, pre-Covid. It was going to be my graduate film at the Centro Sperimentale di Roma. I was finishing a short film and I happened to be in Palermo. When I was on my way to my family home at Christmas, I saw a football field next to the motorway, on the exit for Gioia Tauro. I wondered what it was all about. I already had it in mind to focus on southern Italy; not the South associated with big cities like Naples or Palermo, but more the South in terms of the land, empty spaces, woods, farmers, livestock breeders. A world of manual labour which is far bigger but far less visible. A little later, as I was doing the rounds, I realised that lots of the people I was meeting – despite being very active in terms of their work, social lives and even their political involvement – were experiencing incredible loneliness. I’m convinced that that distance is the result of slow, marginal and lax politics which have neglected a huge part of Italy over the space of sixty years. If that motorway had existed in 1965, we’d no doubt be looking at an entirely different country.

So you think the motorway would have brought real progress?
Being connected changes everything. To be able to travel from Salerno to Reggio Calabria in four and a half hours would totally change your approach to life, especially in a pre-internet era. Italy was one of the first nations to build a railway - the first in Europe was the Naples to Portici line, constructed by the Bourbons in 1800. That link enabled Naples to grow. An absence of infrastructure further south meant that there was nothing to build on.

How did you choose the individual stories featured in the film?
Making films involves making choices, perhaps even more so with documentaries. I didn’t have much time to shoot the film: a month and a half in the first year, two and a half weeks in the second, and a month in the third. I had to maintain relationships in the meantime, which was the hardest part. I tried to represent a vast swathe of the population: children, middle-aged women, middle-aged men, elderly people… Different categories so as to hold up as reflective a mirror as possible. I didn’t always manage it: some of the characters decided they no longer wanted to be filmed. Almost all of the last scenes I shot involved Francesca, a girl who’s fighting for everyone’s rights. I needed something lively, active and modern. I spent hours sitting in silence with Pasquale, the hoarder, because he’s a very reserved person.

Can really local stories, like these, which are so firmly rooted in a specific region, cross the divide and speak to people who aren’t familiar with the South?
When we screened the film at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, the audience responded really well - Italy and Greece have experienced similar struggles. For cultures which are a little further afield, I do worry, because the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway is a very local thing. But if you take a more observational approach, each of the characters creates a microcosm and has a really strong personality which draws you in, because you see something of yourself in them. It all starts with a spark: if you can identify with one of my characters, you’ll get into the film.

How did you work with the archive material used in the film?
It involved four months of work. I already knew what I was looking for, because I wanted the first part of the archive material to serve as the narrator in my place. I prefer the “show it, don't tell it” approach. In the end, we included a title card for international audiences, on the advice of the production team.

I also looked to create associations: in one scene I had a religious procession sharing space with sheep. It wasn’t coincidental. Religion has played an enormous role in the South; it allowed for the creation of social groups which wouldn’t have existed given the lack of State intervention, but it was also very closed-off. My grandma wore a black veil for forty years.

There are lots of women in your documentary.
It was a conscious decision. Women are more participatory. But, most importantly, the South is primarily female. 54% of the population in southern Italy are women. So why do we only make films about the Camorra, with exclusively male protagonists? There’s a huge lack of women in Italian films about the South. But culturally speaking, everything is organised by women. The problem with Italian cinema is that it doesn’t focus on the real Italy. It always churns out the same old approaches, the ones which work on TV.