06/07/2023 - The young filmmaker, born in Italy and living in Belgium, tells us about his first feature-length documentary, which follows a young Burkinese man’s repeated trips between two continents

In his first feature-length documentary, titled An Italian Youth [+see also:
film review
interview: Mathieu Volpe
film profile] and playing in National Competition at the Brussels International Film Festival, Mathieu Volpe follows the repeated trips between Italy and Burkina Faso made by Sokuro, a young Burkinese man who sees his marriage with the young Nassira as an opportunity to reconnect with his origins, all the while fighting to maintain his new roots to Italy. 

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Cineuropa: What were the origins of this project?
Mathieu Volpe: I did a masters in documentary filmmaking, after which I directed a short film in 2019 called Notre territoire, about a slum near where I grew up, in the south of Italy. That’s where I met the family of Sokuro, who worked in this ghetto where people come for the harvest of tomatoes in the summer, and who participated in the economy of this ghost town. All the projects I work on have a connection with the place of foreigners in Italy and the way society looks at them. In Italy, there is a perspective on Black people that isn’t fair. And I think that through the films one makes, we can change that perspective. 

How would you present the film in a few words?
It tells the story of Sokuro, a young Burkinese immigrant living in Italy, whom I’ve known for a few years, and who one day as me if I could film his wedding with a young woman from his native village. At first, it was a beautiful opportunity to spend some time together, then I realised that here was the premise of a film that could address the gap between North and South. We observed how this relationship grew despite the distance, how it would fall apart or rebuild itself. It is also the story of the heritage received by young people whose parents have just moved to another country. To what extent are they uprooted, especially once they become adults; how do they choose where to settle down and build their lives?

What I find most striking about Sokuro, is that he belongs to a generation who lives on one continent, but whose head is always turned towards that of their parents. Especially since for him, the wedding is a way to reconnect with his origins, which for Nassira, it’s a first step towards migration to Europe. How did they build this relationship despite their different visions, their different projects?

Sokuro’s journey also allows you to show a different perspective on the question of economic migration.
What seems fundamental to me today, especially for a White filmmaker interested in Africa, is to share the gaze with the protagonist. I wanted to tell this story with him, I wanted it to discuss immigration but also to remain at a human scale, to be embodied through this love story and the construction of this family. 

I had read a sentence by Laurent Gaudé in his novel Eldorado, which stated that there is always one generation that gets lost in migration, the generation made up of the children of those who decided to leave and who essentially imposed this migration on them. But you need to wait for two of three generations before people can be truly rooted in the new country. It’s as though there is a weak link in migration. For Sokuro’s little brother, it’s a different story, because he was born in Italy, and therefore did his entire education there. How do you deal, when you come from a cultural, physical, economic gap of 4,000 kilometres between Burkina Faso and Italy? 

There is the weight of the family heritage, but also of the host country, and the fact that a person with this type of profile will not be able to access jobs other than those that Italians no longer want to do. 

What were your references, the films or the lectures that inspired you?
I watched many of the films by documentary filmmaker Roberto Minervini, who really works with duration. For this film, we have long moments in Burkina Faso or in Italy each time, we’d spend maybe two or three weeks living with Sokuro’s family. Sometimes we would shoot barely 10 minutes of footage per day, but we were already in a dynamic of sharing. It was also a way to respect them. 

(Translated from French)