Presenting the characters: Frida

Frida is 29 years old; she is driving her car on the bridge in the rush-hour traffic. She checks her rear-view mirror, nervously smoking a cigarette and moving her head in quick jerks. She is suffering from withdrawal. If I don't smoke heroin every day I feel sick, not just a bit sick: very, very sick she writes on a blog about her life as an addict. Every night after working as a clerk Frida walks down a path running behind the tower. Journalists have christened this area Tossic Park (“tossico” is the Italian for “junkie” – translator’s note), an open-air cut-price market for drugs. Currently it is policed by the Army, troops patrol the area, stopping anyone caught there for identification purposes. This is not a problem for Frida, the drug-scene has moved a little further down the river. A Senegalese guy is waiting for her under another bridge, wearing a hoodie and holding a bag of white in his hand. Ten euros are enough to secure her daily dose.
With each new invasion Frida moves further along the river seeking out her trusted contacts. She is at ease in the scrub along the riverbanks, far from family worries, a boring job and the prospect of a “normal” life. On the river Frida is alone with herself and her demon. Here she doesn’t have to care about the future and she can let go: I want to shoot up until I die, here is her motto.
But the arrival of the military will soon mark the end of the drug market on the river banks bringing Frida the chance to free herself of her habit, to start again far away from here, leaving the mud, the scrub and this damned river behind.

A long winter

This winter seems incredibly long.
The land is still frozen and the people on the river are suffering



But the cold has stimulated our minds and produced fresh energy. We are planning to organise an event to accompany the documentary that will deepen and enhance our work.

We will invite photographers to come with us when we shoot. We then plan to organise a public exhibition of their work and perhaps the publication of a book.

Musicians will be invited to write music inspired by the main theme of the documentary: the river and the heart of darkness...of the city. The intent is to create an orginal soundtrack, maybe a real album, and a live screening.

Intensive and profitable collaboration is growing with Babydoc film production. They are taking an important and active part in the movie.

Animator Daniele Baiardini interviewed Reno asking him to participate in an exercise for Scuola di Animazione di Chieri. We hope this will open new doors to the use of animation in the movie.


Applied for ITVS international funding open call
Applied for Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Pitching Forum (2009)

Boa sorte, Colombre!

A docu-western

If you don't understand then you'll experience blades and fire. This is our law.
Gerardo explains to us that here on the river you don't have any other choice to defend your land. Now with the Army patroling the opposite side things may be changing.



A waste land, the borders, the project of the railway and the golf course, the farmers mad about nomads, the river, the old hermit. With these ingredients it's beecoming a sort of western movie. A docu-western?

Pictures made by photographer Marco Santantonio portrait this world:
- The nomads
- Reno's world

Snowstorm on the city

Snowstorm on the city. 50 cm of snow fell on the ground: it seems impossible to reach the place where Reno lives on the river. He is completely isolated. We are worried for him.


SNOWSTORM IN TOWN from cap on Vimeo.

Let's recap (December). New scenes.

New scenes we have to consider after the Christmas overview. Telling or reenacting:

- The epic summer night fishing (Gerardo)

- Gerardo and the Roms (A controversial relationship: giving the children water from his well, digging holes in the ground to build toilets but then burning branches to scare them)

- Van Gogh's portrait (Reno)

- Reno catching up that big trunk in the middle of the river and then cutting it to make little pieces for the fire. (we have to take a chainsaw to help Reno doing this)

- Taking samples from the bridge [we met two young technicians from Arpa (Regional Agency for Environment Protection). They take sample of grubs and water for analysis pulling down a bucket from the bridge.]

Christmas on the river

We paid a Christmas visit to our riverbank characters. There were four of us, quite a team: accompanying Niccolò, the producer, and Andrea, the director were two special photographers, Marco Santantonio, with 35 mm camera, and Pietro Luzzati with a digital one.
We made an unexpected discovery: nothing less than a (reproduction) portrait by Van Gogh painted by Reno under the makeshift roof of the shack where he lives. He told us that he had started it a few months ago and he agreed to finish it for us. Probabily it will be a scene that you will be able to watch in the documentary.

We then moved over to Gerardo in his unlawful garden. Christmas time has made him quite happy. Sticking to the typical Italian southern tradition, he will spend a lot of time eating with friends and family. We chatted cheerfully on his "terrace" on the bank and some quite interesting stories emerged like the last summer night fishing: Gerardo and friends they took a three feet long “groper” (the typical river fish) with a stick. Was it really that long? Was it a fisherman’s boast? Anyway we have to think how to film a night fishing scene.
He further told us that last month he helped his gipsy neighbours to build toilets. He dug two holes in the ground, one for women, one for men. But they kept stealing from him and so he set a lot of branches on fire near their shacks to scare them away.

Roky’s school is closed for the Christmas holydays, but when we got to the his shack we couldn’t find him: he was away, picking som from the rubbish bins at Porta Palazzo, this city’s huge open air market, one of the largest in Europe, a favorite shopping area for Turin people and tourists, where you can buy anything (at very good value for money) from fish to ancient furniture, from trousers to tea. A lot of non first class vegetables and fruit are discarded and thrown into rubbish bin by sellers near the end of the day and the river poor often scavenge for food.

We didn’t wait for him to come back but gave his people good food as a Christmas gift. They thanked us and were very, very happy.

At the end of the dark

two days to winter solstice.
we are sitting at the end of the dark.
today the river has an incredible beauty.

Leaning to the balustrade from the bridge,
behind the tower, you can see snowy mountains crowning the city

Frida is not answering the phone.
Nor Reno. ( I think that he is not able to shut down the automatic answering service on the mobile I gave to him)