1941: Victory seems near. The convoy proceeds between songs and hopes. The soldier’s mind goes back to the fairy tales told by his Russian mother. The train crosses Europe, venturing into the immense Ukrainian territory. At the arrival of winter the enthusiasm falls under the blows of the first dead, the frost and the snow. Desires change: no longer victory, but a warm bed, food, return home. The immense steppe swept by the storm seems to be inhabited by ghosts.
The directors. “Il Varco is a fiction story built with repertoire footage. It is the story of a soldier during the Russia campaign of World War II. In creating the story of a drifting man, we drew on imaginary even apparently far from each other: the adventure novel, the Russian folk tales, the dirty conscience of fascist colonialism, the diaries of the Italian soldiers on the eastern front. And finally fragments of a future war that is being fought today in the same places in Ukraine.”
Federico Ferrone (1981) and Michele Manzolini (1980) have been working together since 2007. After some documentary and television experiences, their work focused on the creative use of audiovisual repertoires.
IL VARCO (Italia, 2019, 70’). Director, Federico Ferrone, Michele Manzolini; voice, Emidio Clementi; screenplay, Federico Ferrone, Michele Manzolini, Wu Ming 2; editing, Maria Fantastica Valmori; cinematography, Andrea Vaccari; music, Simonluca Laitempergher; producer, Claudio Giapponesi; production Kiné, Cinecittà Luce with Home Movies, Rai Cinema, Emilia- Romagna film commission.
