Among the reconfirmations of this edition also Showcase Emilia- Romagna, the section launched in 2018 in collaboration with the Emilia-Romagna Film Commission that presents films produced in the territory that stood out in terms of artistic and public success.
Proposed within this section, The Sky over Kibera by Marco Martinelli is a transposition of the Divine Comedy in an African guise, metaphorically combining Dante's infernal world with the reality of Kenya.
THE SKY OVER KIBERA
Italy, 2019, 43’
Director: Marco Martinelli / Screenwriters: Marco Martinelli, Riccardo Bonacina / Editor: Francesco Tedde / Cast: 150 students from Nairobi (Kenya) schools / Music: Daniele Roccato / Production: Ravenna Teatro/Teatro delle Albe / Cinematographer: François Messier-Rheault
Kibera in Swahili means “forest”, and it is among the labyrinthine streets of the largest slum in Nairobi that Marco Martinelli has tried to reinvent Dante's Divine Comedy in a contemporary key within a project that involved 150 children and adolescents. Three boys give face and voice to Dante, Beatrice and Virgilio and are the guide in this poetic journey into the slum, a "dark forest" of poverty, conflict, violence in which the universal dimension, and beyond time, of the Dante word is revealed.
Marco Martinelli, author, playwright and director, is founder and artistic director together with Ermanna Montanari of the Teatro delle Albe. He has signed over fifty directives and his texts are published and staged in Italy and many other countries.
For the project of The Sky over Kibera, the AVSI Foundation won the 2019 Volunteer Award for the Culture section, conferred by the Senate of the Republic.
