06/05/2005 - The director of The Best of Youth is coming back in Cannes with Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti. "I decided to see the dramatic subject of clandestine immigration through the eyes of a young boy"

After three films on the 1970’s, Marco Tullio Giordana ‘felt like telling about the present,’ which led him to deal with the dramatic subject of clandestine immigration in his new film, Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marco Tullio Giordana
interview: Riccardo Tozzi
film profile], which will be released on the 13th of May. For that matter, it is the only Italian film in competition this year. ‘My rivals are good, so we do not expect anything in order not to be disappointed afterwards.’
Despite this, the new Giordana, produced by Cattleya and Rai Cinema, raises great expectations — since in 2003, Giordana’s The Best of Youth won the prestigious "Un certain regard" section.

In Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti, the main character is Sandro, a 12-year-old boy (very well played by a young beginner, Matteo Gadola) who goes sailing, falls in the water and is saved by a big boat full of clandestine immigrants. Sandro, who lives in Brescia, the Italian province most peopled by non-European workers, suddenly sees these desperate men and women in a different, more human, way. This experience represents a step from adolescence into adulthood.

‘What Sandro learns on the boat with the clandestines is life,’ says the director. ‘When the boat reaches the Italian coast, he too feels what belonging somewhere means, he has become like one of the immigrants.’
Giordana avoids unnecessary rhetorics ; he says to have only ‘told the truth at which all cinema aims,’ without oversimplifying it, as TV does. The film is actually based on a study written by Maria Pace Ottieri. ‘It would be difficult to take an immigrant’s point of view, so I decided to see things through the eyes of this boy, an adolescent with no prejudices and no ideology.’

(Translated from Italian)