In a collective narrative, the imperfect humanity of the most beloved puppet

Not just a fairy tale, not just a character, not just an archetype, but a key to entering every personal and universal coming-of-age story, across Europe, America, Africa and the East: it is a journey within a journey—both inner and outer, and transcending all artistic, physical and political boundaries—that the viewer undertakes around the globe and, to some extent, within themselves as well, whilst watching "Pinocchio, il bambino del mondo", a documentary that had its world premiere at the 21st Rome Film Festival. Directed by Paolo Boraccetti, written by Ilaria Sbarigia with Andrea Massara and Fabrizio Galatea, and produced by Lilium Distribution and d-hub studios, in co-production with the French company Tag Film, this travelling Pinocchio will be broadcast on 22 November on Rai Uno, in the late-evening slot, two hundred years after the birth of Carlo Collodi, the Florence prefecture clerk – part revolutionary, part writer – who, initially, did not even want to finish the serialised story of Pinocchio published in the magazine Il giornale per i bambini, and who brought it back to life at the eleventh hour following protests from his young readers.

This, too, is a story within a story, and there are many narrative threads that each of Pinocchio’s supporting characters recounts through their reconstruction – at times rigorous or philological, at other times emotional and poetic – of those who, in various capacities, have worked with that blueprint, Collodi’s fantastical novel, ‘encountering’ it and emerging transformed: the screen displays the testimonies and reflections – profound and often surprising – of directors, actors, lecturers, philosophers and art historians who have engaged with the puppet at different stages of their lives and in different parts of the world, interpreting through shifting lenses not only the character of the puppet-child, but also his unforgettable supporting characters – who are themselves archetypes – gradually confined by prejudice and gradually freed from that cage. Is the Blue Fairy a little girl, a woman, an ally or a tyrant, wonders the young Alida Baldari Calabria – who played the eleven-year-old Blue Fairy in Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio (2019) – as she reflects on her own growth both within and outside the film? And who is Lucignolo really, wonders director Francesca Comencini, taking his side – an expert on Pinocchio by family osmosis, that is, first and foremost because she had him at home, in the form of a TV drama directed in 1972 by her father Luigi? Or who is Mangiafuoco really, we ask ourselves, whilst Anna Luscenkova Foscolo, lecturer in Russian Language and Literature, recounts the Soviet parallel to Pinocchio: ‘Buratino’ – with a single ‘t’ – who emerged from the pages of the lesser-known Tolstoy (Aleksey), and later became an animated film and an Iron Curtain counterpart to one of Disney’s most famous cartoons: and so a Mangiafuoco takes shape – a true villain and true antagonist, renamed Karabas Barabas and a symbol of all capitalist wickedness, facing a Pinocchio who fights for the oppressed workers.

However, it also features the inclusive puppet from “Pinocchio, che cos’è una persona?” by the playwright and educationalist Davide Iodice – which recounts the origins and journey of a teenager navigating the twists and turns of growing up, a boy to whom society perhaps ‘gives a long nose for being a liar’, but this is merely a mirror: who is the real liar? Among others, the philosopher Caroline Anthèrieu-Yagbasan, the director and puppet designer Toby Olié, art historian Francesca Tancini, Chinese lecturer Gao Chanxu (who still remembers the cover of Pinocchio that fascinated him as a child) and director Guillermo del Toro. The result is a collective narrative full of unexpected insights: is the piece of wood from which the animated puppet is born like Michelangelo’s marble, which imposes its form on the sculptor? Pinocchio is a symbol of imperfect humanity even when he becomes a boy and looks with amused tenderness at his former self—a block of wood—in the corner of the room, having gone through love and pain; it is like when one finds oneself looking back at one’s past self, emerging from a disastrous relationship: ‘Oh, how funny I looked when I was in love!’. But Pinocchio also looks to the future, and there is much of the unease of our times in the film’s exploration of the relationship between humans and puppets: Pinocchio as an android? Pinocchio as AI? But, in another surprise, it is the ending itself that challenges us: why does no one ever remember the last page of Pinocchio?