There are films which are born out of urgency and whose form bears the traces of inner turmoil. Dom [+lire aussi :
interview : Massimiliano Battistella
fiche film] by Massimiliano Battistella isn’t just a story, it’s an emotional environment, a psychological landscape which the viewer is invited to inhabit. In this film, intimacy and loss interweave within a rigorously refined form, which sees the time occupied by the film’s images overlaps with the time occupied by memory. The film’s mise en scène becomes a bridge: through everyday details, silences and hesitant gestures, Battistella’s film reflects upon what it means to inhabit a space, a bond, an existential condition. Dom opened Venice Nights in Venice’s 22nd Giornate degli Autori.

CinecittàNews: Massimiliano, in Dom, the dimension of intimate space is transformed into an emotional and symbolic territory. What was the starting point for creating this relationship between physical and inner spaces?
Massimiliano Battistella: The starting point was pictorial, visual and emotional: I was working on a film about motherhood, about lost motherhood, and I was inspired by paintings from the Renaissance, figures relating to images of certain Madonnas and to Botticelli’s delicate approach. I was looking for a kind of motherhood that was visual in some way. Then I came across the story about the Dom Bjelave orphanage and I got up close and personal with the people involved. Meeting Mirela was like some sort of epiphany, because I discovered certain sides of her that I was looking for, that spoke to me; personal sides; it was as if a kind of mise en abyme took place in that moment, something that was inside of me but which I then encountered in a real, concrete story. I felt an inner urge to try to get closer to the characters, especially to the protagonist who’s telling her story: so my proximity to her outlook reflects her proximity to my outlook on a story I’ve told about a childhood which is shattered but which – paradoxically – carries on vigorously and almost miraculously.

Mirela – who was 10 at the time and evacuated on a humanitarian convoy when the Slavic war broke out – seems to be a narrating body here. What direction did you take in order to turn her into a meeting point between the film’s intimate side and its universal reach?
In truth, through an abstract approach. There were two main lines that I followed, both of which are part of my approach and my vision for this story. There’s a more abstract line which is detached from realism and concrete elements, and a more truthful line. Together, they come to form a complete story: it was thanks to dialogue between these two sides that I managed to produce a story, akin to the one I experienced with Mirella. The proximity between our approaches was substantial: total abandon, our empathy, always being in contact – it all went above and beyond the film and embraced a method that we ourselves applied – psychodrama – buoyed up by someone who was prepared to listen; obviously, when you’re telling certain stories, it’s important to remember your ethical motivations, to listen, and to try to stay one step behind, without ever putting pressure on the person whose tale you’re telling. It was through this kind of trust that we managed to open up our approach to tell a universal tale, because Mirela’s story also speaks to the stories of so many other people who lived through that experience, especially when it comes to the Dom Bjelave orphanage, though sadly the theme of rootlessness can be applied to much of humanity.

In addition to the visual dimension, sound and silence also seem to play leading roles in Dom. What role did sound design play in the creative process?
A substantial role, because the entire dimension of sound is an inner, realism-based dimension, from a sound research and recording perspective. The noises you hear are the real noises of Sarajevo, there’s realism in the purity of the sounds: we didn’t create any effects, we didn’t add anything that might be jarring, and we incorporated all of this into our approach. […]