«The Horror of War in My Magical Story. My film cannot be catalogued»- Corriere.it

BERLIN Giacomo Abbruzzese is homeless, a bit like the protagonist of his debut, Disco Boy, «an atypical war story», with Aleksei, played by Franz Rogowski, who escapes from Belarus and takes refuge in the Foreign Legion. He is the only Italian competing at the Berlinale, a natural destination: «Yes, it’s the right place».

Abbruzzese is 39 years old, he is from Taranto, «popular family, mother secretary in an analysis laboratory, father surveyor in the Municipality. I didn’t follow the traditional path of the filmmaker, I didn’t go through Rome». He dissolved his borders by living in Canada and Israel, he worked as a photographer, documentaries and shorts, now he lives in Paris where he shot his story «with the gaze of a foreigner in France A hard experience, a bet, I took took twelve years and I had 32 days to shoot it. A race against time.”

He changed three producers, «but in Italy they wouldn’t let me do it. The platforms are eating up auteur cinema, there’s a boom in TV series, it’s not easy to find even free technicians. And my film is not categorizable. The problem is how to defend projects like this. I have a soft spot for cinema as a journey, the story is not important but how you tell it». It will be released on March 9 for Lucky Red, subtitled in Italian, in the 5 original languages: French, Russian, Polish, English and Nigerian.

Disco Boy it is «a film without a passport that combines realism with the supernatural», the documentary approach with the psychedelic register. He defines it as “a magical, shamanic narrative”. In the Niger delta the soldier (“the Foreign Legion has an iconic and mythological potential that is little exploited in cinema”, intertwines his destiny with a Nigerian guerrilla. The actor is Morr Ndiaye, “he emigrated on a boat, passing through Libya where he was locked up in a detention center run by Nigerians, who were his tormentors, I had to work hard to convince him to join the film”. The guerrilla fights against the oil companies that threaten the survival of his village, while his sister ( Laetitia Ky) dreams of escaping. “We see wars from only one point of view, the enemy does not exist. I wanted to show the horror of war by giving emotional dignity to both sides”.

Then the dance: «It has in common with the war the discipline, the sacrifice, the physical effort up to the pain». The guerrilla danced in a club and his killer, the soldier, to win the most difficult battle, guilt, as in a reconciliation, leaves the Foreign Legion, works as a dancer with Morr’s sister, becomes a Disco Boy. And the film turns into a dance between two worlds. “The sense is that the enemy is no different from us, Aleksei identifies himself with the guerrilla, he becomes him”.

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