23/04/2015 - A journey into childhood today. This is the former politician’s second documentary since making his debut with Quando c'era Berlinguer in 2014

I bambini sanno by Walter Veltroni

I bambini sanno [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Walter Veltroni was released in theatres today by Bim Distribuzione. The film – A Sky production produced by Wildside in collaboration with Palomar, like Veltroni’s previous film Quando c'era Berlinguer – is a journey into childhood, led by the voices of thirty-nine children who were asked by the director about their future plans and dreams, love, passions, religion, crises, the family and homosexuality.

The director uses quotes from The Little Prince to comment on his documentary: “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”. Saint Exupéry knew the truth about life as well as the ways and secrets to speaking to the heart, to the imagination, to the minds of children. In the 1960s, if you wandered around the streets of Italy, there was a child, aged between zero and fourteen, per every four inhabitants. Now there’s one per every eight, half as many. A country in which children are disappearing is a country without faith, with no desire for a future, a more conservative country. It’s also a country with less imagination, less time for play, and less optimism". 

Veltroni explains that he tried to build a picture of the present-day through the voices of children. “Children are not these strange creatures with whom you need to use that falsely sympathetic tone of voice that adults use to communicate with them. Children have their own world, their own point of view, a wonderful sincerity. This film shows how our children, aged between eight and thirteen, observe and judge Italy, their lives, grown-ups, and the future”.

(Translated from Italian)