“I like telling stories that won’t be out of date by tomorrow,” says producer Michele Bongiorno

A young economics graduate, Michele Bongiorno was working in marketing for an Italian company in Buenos Aires when he realised that what he really wanted to do in life was something else: ‘telling stories’. Stories about society and everyday life, the lives of artists, entrepreneurs and soldiers. He did not aspire to write them down, but to bring them to life; he did not want them to chase current affairs, but to stand the test of time. So, upon returning to Milan, he founded Good Day Films, which has produced around thirty documentaries over the course of two decades and of which Bongiorno – the eldest son of Mike and Daniela Zuccoli – is the founder and director.

The recently completed work is dedicated to Lucio Fontana and has taken Bongiorno back to Argentina, to the places where it all began for him and for the great artist, who conceived the Spatialist movement in Buenos Aires. “Lucio Fontana, The Final Cut”, directed by Andrea Bettinetti and produced by Good Day Films in collaboration with Nexo Studios, was made with the exclusive authorisation of the artist’s foundation and Unipol as the main partner. It will have its premiere on 8 October in Naples at the Teatro San Carlo to mark the opening of the Artecinema Festival, conceived by Laura Trisorio and now in its 31st edition.

It is the first work to set out to tell his story in what I hope will be a definitive manner, and with the Foundation’s authorisation. It deals not only with the artistic career of an enlightened mind of the twentieth century, but also with his personal journey. I therefore regard this work as a demonstration of cultural responsibility.

Fontana is one of my favourite artists, and the previously unseen footage of his locations in Argentina took me back to the time when I lived there. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated by stories – biographies in particular – until, whilst in Buenos Aires, I happened to meet two survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash, when the surviving passengers, lost in the snow, were forced to resort to cannibalism. At the time, I thought how much I would love to tell that story—which has also inspired films—but in a documentary style. That is when I realised what path I was meant to follow.

They should be original, have the feel of unpublished material, and remain relevant long afterwards, precisely because they do not chase after trivial current affairs.

“Cy Dear”, the 2018 documentary film about Cy Twombly, also directed by Bettinetti: it was the first film dedicated to the artist, with the support of his Foundation. It was screened at MoMA in New York: for a small Italian film production company, this is a real honour.

There are documentary films that can be rebroadcast on television even years later, such as the 2007 “Il Commenda e l’Incantabis”, a parallel biography of Angelo Rizzoli and Arnoldo Mondadori, who were born in the same year: two parallel lives, two visionaries of the cultural industry who came from nothing. Another example is “Il Crepuscolo degli Dei” on state-sponsored doping in East Germany, which resurfaces periodically whenever the issue returns to the forefront of sports news. Then there is the medium-length film about Emma Bonino, which we shot while she was living in Cairo. We are careful to gauge market tastes, but also to resist the temptation to work on breaking news, because in a world that moves at breakneck speed, such stories become outdated even more quickly. A high-quality narrative – including from a technical and artistic perspective – must aspire to the possibility of being enjoyed again with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps it’s just that I feel like a man of the twentieth century.

I was born in 1972 and belong squarely to the pre-digital generation – the one that knew coin-operated telephone boxes and has since experienced, and continues to experience, a massive transformation. I follow technological, geopolitical and social developments; I’m curious to see where artificial intelligence will take us, but at the same time I try not to let myself be swallowed up by haste, by the rush to check the latest notification, by the frantic pace of life. The best projects are the result of reflection, of that slow, measured pace that allows you to step back from the frenzy of immediacy. Constant connectivity is also a conscious choice.

“Reduci” from 2013, about our soldiers returning from missions in Afghanistan, was unique in the way it explored the human element from the inside. To bring it to fruition, I had to overcome initial resistance from the Army, which subsequently showed great enthusiasm for it. Unfortunately, Rai did not understand the project, whereas Sky wanted it straight away. I was proud to present a preview of it at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in front of the Chief of the General Staff and around fifty generals. Its success encouraged me to produce the documentary film “Lungo la Blue Line” in 2015, about the UNIFIL mission in southern Lebanon when it was under Italian command.

It lacks the BBC’s tradition of documentary-making, but it could do more, not least because these projects have relatively modest budgets compared to drama and entertainment programmes. Special-interest channels, although they offer very well-produced programmes, are unlikely to satisfy the public’s growing interest.