"Where even pain is full joy" is a line from a poem by Mario Luzi that director Gianni Amelio uses as a central theme in his new film, Nessun Dolore, presented Out of competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Alessandro Borghi and Valeria Golino, with a cameo from Valerio Mastandrea, play the main characters in a story about acceptance and guilt, pain and freedom, set in a Rome that welcomes, rejects, and ultimately embodies the colours of a newly multi-ethnic city.
"Nessun dolore came out of a remote need: to go beyond the story of the exodus in Lamerica, my film now thirty years old, its suspended finale on a ship in the middle of the Adriatic. What has changed since then? Who is the "immigrant"? Someone to welcome, or to reject? A new friend, or a dangerous stranger?" explains Amelio. The story of the hero Davide, a bookseller, is rooted in this territory, one that is politically uncertain but alive and vibrant on a human and social level.
Thirty-year-old Davide (Alessandro Borghi) runs a stand in Rome’s Piazza Risorgimento. He loves books, longing for them to live, so much so that he often gives them away. On an ordinary day in a frenetic metropolis, where his stand floats like a stable and comforting raft, a tragedy profoundly upends Davide's life. A stranger, an immigrant, throws a child at him, deciding that, from that moment on, he is to be the child's father. Despite Davide's reluctance and refusal, the child begins to follow him, but his brief journey ends tragically. Overcome with guilt - towards the child, and towards all of humanity experiencing the trauma of flight and precariousness - and bereft of bearings, he decides to take in Aminah, a trembling, lost pregnant teenager recently arrived from Algeria. That marks the beginning: day by day, his home becomes a refuge for more immigrants. Neighbourhood complaints land him in to jail for aiding and abetting illegal immigration, while his friend Elsa (Valeria Golino) tries to help him.
Nessun dolore can rightfully be called a personal story. Personal to the director, who in a certain sense has experienced something similar in his own life, and personal to his viewers. It's hard not to empathize with Davide, with his doubts, fear and reluctance, perhaps too with his desire to atone for a feeling of guilt, for which he is not responsible, when faced with the plight of those who live on our streets.
There’s a passion for books in Nessun dolore, which unite, travel, explore, show, and tell a story that, as the director himself put it, "has yet to happen." In the film, books symbolize the need to explore and delve into the frightening, tormenting world, that world we'd like to ignore, but which already lives and pulsates in the streets.
The story of Nessun dolore unfolds (film outline) in the streets of a large, multifaceted city, Rome embraces and embodies this story, reflecting its emotions and situations. The different locations where the scenes take place seem chosen with rigorous criteria to convey every aspect of the story, almost like a novel.
“I wanted to make a film where the city was truly very important, the protagonist. There’s a balance between Prati, a neighbourhood of the ancient Roman bourgeoisie, a cultured society, and the Rome that is almost uninhabited by Romans, the so-called Rome of the underworld. This is not the suburbs, it’s the area behind Termini station, including Via Giolitti, a key location in my film The Stolen Children, a crossroads of lost souls. Stations are places of transience, not life. These are the two places I wanted to represent” said Gianni Amelio at the film's presentation at the Venice Film Festival.
Nessun dolore, produced by Kavac Film, Our Films a Mediawan Company, Be Water Film with Rai Cinema, will be released on 24 September by 01 Distribution.