A project born in the classrooms of the Academy, and then open to the world. Yari Saccotelli, a graduate of the RUFA School of Cinema, is a multifaceted artist who is capable of experimenting, with consistently high results, in the various fields of contemporary expression. After several years of study, dedicated to deepening his thesis project, for the young director of Trani, a splendid tourist center in Puglia, the time has come to reap the most significant fruits.
“Amos è Zawadi”, the docufilm that Yari Saccotelli imagined and realized before completing his training, continues to reap success: after the first place as best European film at the “Reykjavík International Film Festival” in Iceland and the conquest of the title as best emerging film at “The Sabira Cole Film Festival” in Pittsburgh (United States of America), the film was selected in the “Sweden Film Awards”.
The film tells the story of the author’s journey to Tanzania, where he met the story of the two protagonists Amos and Zawadi: an “and” that aims to unite the names of the two protagonists, to explain the deep bond of interdependence that involves two simple boys, friends as well as cousins.
Zawadi is a 19-year-old tanzanian boy, born with a severe motor disability that does not allow him to be independent. And then there is his cousin Amos who takes care of him day after day. In December 2017 Yari Saccotelli leaves for Tanzania to spend a month in what is the reality of a small village in the city of Iringa. This is the reality of Zawadi, a 17-year-old boy who has never known the concept of autonomy in his life. The only limb he can control is his right foot, the one with which he was able to write a fifty-page book entitled “I am Zawadi”, which tells about his situation and his land. His independence is provided by Amos, cousin and indispensable companion.
When he arrived in Africa, after an exhausting journey that lasted 17 hours, the director immediately realized that it was not the typical clichés of this land that attracted his attention, but the special bond between the two young tanzanian boys: fascinated by the story of the protagonists, he decided to compress it into a documentary to represent their different complexities. Above all the communication: the only one who spoke English was Zawadi, while Amos knows the idiom of the place, the Swaili language.
The bridge between the different experiences was the “Nyumba Ali”, an association born in 2006 from the idea of the bolognese Bruna and Lucio that deals with the support and care of children with disabilities, also considering the context: at these latitudes particularly severe disabled people are abandoned, left to their fate and often “suppressed at the origin”.
The docufilm, whose editing was made not only by Yari Saccotelli but also by Daniele Monetti, is defined by the director as “neorealist”.Everything is left in its naturalness, without artificiality of post-production as involving soundtracks or particular shots. The 64 minutes of this independent film leave the viewer the freedom to perceive any emotion, without conditioning of a direction that has remained raw.
