Balkan

One thing must be said straight away. Nicola Sorcinelli is a courageous filmmaker. We have not seen his short films, but Balcanica certainly marks a remarkable debut. It deals with migration – specifically along the Balkan route – and to do so, it focuses on ‘non-places’. We are at the border, not far from Trieste, but you wouldn’t know it from the landscape. They are ‘non-places’, precisely: according to the definition given by Marc Augé in the 1990s, and one that has since been all too often overused. Usually, this refers to huge shopping centres in the middle of nowhere, or fake squares without a single bench. Let us add our own interpretation: for those migrating illegally – from Afghanistan, like the two musicians in the film, a father and son, for whom music is banned in their homeland and who have been invited to Trieste to play – these are the final kilometres they must cover on foot. The elderly Nazar, a conductor, has a badly injured foot. Together with his son Jalil, who plays the tuba, he is forced to stop frequently. Some say it is the toughest border crossing; others say they have tried it three times and bear the scars; a Pakistani cricketer wants to go to Ireland. “What’s a woman doing all alone in the woods?” Nazar asks before Matilda De Angelis, a volunteer doctor, tends to his injured foot. They have mobile phones – but recharging them isn’t always easy. The sky is always grey, it’s cold, and they have to seek shelter from the storms. Winner of the Audience Award at the Giornate degli Autori.