Director's Notes
I was obliged to go beyond
The material of the many interviews collected over three years, aboard fishing boats around Italy, seemed impossible to cut without loss of meaning.
In 2019 I started scientific research on fishing work. From the very beginning it was clear to me I needed to go beyond writing a book. The problems of the fishing world had to be communicated: on the one hand, a relentless-looking decline, on the other, the possibilities of a regeneration through collective and public awareness of its value in terms of cultural richness and variety.
The material of the many interviews seemed impossible to cut without loss of meaning, since they had been collected over three years, aboard fishing boats around Italy, during fishing trips and shootings that lasted up to 17-18 hours. To do so, I wrote this film through the tale of a character who could give voice to all the fishermen I had met. His story, starting from the sinking of his fishing boat, draws inspiration from a true event, which I developed and built freely, nevertheless referring to what I had observed and collected.
Such contamination between documentary and fiction turned out to be consistent with my approach, in which fictional cinema has always been the main scope of sociological observation of social complexity.
The film, entirely based on research material, develops through the alternation between what is said by the protagonist (acting in a neutral and stylized space) and the footage shot aboard fishing boats (describing the job). It’s a fictional personal story, but deeply true, emblematic and tragically common. It is no coincidence that this film was made possible and produced by Fai Cisl, the main Italian trade union in this sector. The film becomes the mouthpiece of an underlying intent: giving us hope for the unlikely as an essential premise for the act of social construction of reality, as future is never already written.
