Calabria seen by migrants and migrants seen (and welcomed) by Calabria. There is this and much more in the award-winning docufilm “Nyumba” (home, in Swahili), recently presented in the region. The docufilm, conceived and written by Paola Bottero, directed by Francesco Del Grosso, produced by Indaco Film with the support of the Calabria Film Commission, began its tour from Catanzaro. In the next week it will be, among other things, in Corigliano, Locri, Cosenza (Wednesday, 6pm, San Nicola cinema), in Reggio (Friday, 10am for schools and 6pm, Odeon cinema) finishing on Monday 2 March in Lamezia (9.30am for schools, Campanella auditorium; 6pm, Costabile cinema).
Five migrants, well integrated in Calabria, where they found “nyumba”, tell their stories, different even if similar, difficult, violent, in close contact with death before finding a welcome that allowed perfect integration. They are Abdoulaye, Alex, Moussa, Sisi and Hafsa, four men and a woman, from different African countries. An extraordinary experience that we talked about with the author Paola Bottero, journalist and writer, very close to Calabria.
I would like to start from two sentences you wrote in the past. The first is: «Good life exists in Calabria. Nobody ever bothered to tell it. Using a metaphor, Calabria is an immense and clear sea, within which an octopus lives, which spits its ink everywhere. And it seems that the sea is ink. It seems that the blacks and grays around the octopus are the only colors worthy of representing this land.” The concept is clear, but how can we take it forward?
«Talk about it. Our job is to tell, to try to show things and remove the veils. Otherwise all the trappings that are placed on the narrative of Calabria every day risk suffocating its image. “Nyumba”, as well as my first novel, “Jus sanguinis”, were born to tell the story of Calabria that was not being told. In “Nyumba” many themes arise and intersect. Not only those of beautiful and welcoming Calabria, but also the meaning of migrations. Ours is a population of migrants. The Calabrian one even more so, there are many more Calabrians scattered around the world than those who live in the region. Migration is not escaping from one’s homeland, but seeking a land that is better able to welcome. And Calabria knows how to welcome a lot.”
The second sentence is a quote from Saint Augustine: «Hope has two beautiful children: disdain for things as they are and the courage to change them». How do you move between indignation and courage? And how should the Calabrians do it?
«There are two quotes that I often repeat, one is this one from Saint Augustine and the other is from Corrado Alvaro on the doubt that being honest is useless. They are two sides of the same coin: indignation and courage are useful, but sometimes indignation does not find the courage. To construct the subject of “Nyumba” I was guided by disdain and courage, then came the doubt, on the banks of Cutro, the night between 25 and 26 February, three years ago, when, while I was working to identify my protagonists, 94 migrants ended up in that cemetery that is the Mediterranean. I felt helpless and believed that it was useless to talk if these tragedies happened anyway. Then the indignation returned when, opening Google Maps, I found the migrants’ shoal geolocated, because someone had thought it could become a place of macabre tourism. We immediately started the procedures to have that geolocation deleted. This made me feel the urgency to carry on with the work again. I arranged the choral story of our five protagonists on Cutro beach. Some stories begin with one voice and continue with another, precisely because the journey of hope is so particular and identical to itself that, except for a few details, the wood instead of the dinghy or one story of violence rather than another, the stories are photocopiable. Mixing them becomes a collective voice, it is my way of transforming indignation into courage of narration, of story, of representation. The Calabrians do it, they do it a lot, always, obstinately, throwing their hearts beyond the obstacle.”
«Nyumba» is presented as welcome, inclusion, sharing and memory. An original way of illustrating this region.
«These are fundamental issues. I am the first migrant because, although I am not Calabrian, I behave like a Calabrian and I love Calabria. Alongside bad stories, because in any case I am a journalist and a journalist I remain, thanks to the intensity with which I lived here, I got to know the “beautiful Calabria”, the one I represented, which knows how to network and doesn’t need the spotlight to do so.”
The documentary film tells stories of migrants with happy endings, but we know that these are not many, as the dedication to the Cutro shipwreck immediately reminds us. What should be done to make «Nyumba» stories the norm?
«I take my answer from Montale: “Only today can we tell you what we are not, what we don’t want”. I am a person who tells stories believing that this can help build something better. We certainly shouldn’t demonize everything we don’t know. And there are things that could be done. Understanding that yes, it’s true, some migrants have done bad things. But if we look at the number of crimes and count their seriousness, especially those against individuals, then it is almost all whites who commit the worst crimes, not migrants. Studying something to help us be more welcoming and them to have a better life is the right thing. There are jobs that we Italians no longer want to do. Our country is getting older, it needs caregivers, housekeepers, caregivers to look after our elderly and we go looking for them among migrants. It would be enough to look at everything we manage to get from new peoples to understand that we can only gain.”
Did the migrants who participated in the film also contribute ideas?
«They told their lives and therefore gave everything. The term “Mediterranean cemetery” is mentioned in many newspapers, which is present in the closing signs of the film and is a contribution of ideas born from Abdoulaye. One of the questions we asked the five was: “When you look at the sea, what do you think?”. Abdoulaye said: “I look at the sea, I can no longer bathe because for me it is a cemetery.” The answers were then edited into the film, sequenced with visualization through Sand Art, the sand drawing technique created by Rachele Strangis, an artist from Lamezia Terme, which gives added value to the film.”