Germany's Volker Sattel and Italy's Francesca Bertin explore in their dynamic and powerful documentary Tara [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: Volker Sattel y Francesca …
ficha de la película] the social and physical spaces around the river that gives its name to the film, which connects the city of Taranto to the monstrous steel mill on the harbour side. On the occasion of the film's premiere at Visions du Réel, we met the directors, who spoke about the production and their commitment to their protagonists.

Cineuropa: Where did the idea come from to talk about the ILVA in Taranto through the Tara river?
Volker Sattel: Usually, in my case, one film follows the other. The interest in the ILVA was there for a long time. I made a film about nuclear power plants and researched steel plants for another project. In the process, I came across ILVA. I was amazed to learn how long the controversies about pollution have been going on. I met Francesca through another project. She showed me an article about the community of people at the Tara who believe in the healing powers of the water. With these images in mind we went to Taranto, and then realised how the river and the steel mill are connected.

Francesca Bertin: As an Italian, I had known this story for a long time. That's why the idea of making this film was a challenge for me at first. But when the story with the river came up, it was a good approach to this place. There was the possibility to find a different perspective, our own way through the river.

How did you proceed with the research?
FB: It's not possible not to talk about ILVA when you're in Taranto. There's a lot of media engagement with the residents. That's why there is skepticism among them about this media attention. We have built our encounters over years, they have become friendships. We asked ourselves, what does the film bring to the protagonists? And that's why it should be a collaboration between the two of us and them.

How did you find and select the people who speak in the film?
FB: We started by exploring a landscape from different perspectives, its architecture and its history. We met people who already have a certain presence through the media, which then led us to different places and finally to other people. A lot has come from honest exchanges, and the approach of not talking about the factory, but about them.

VS: It was a long road that was only possible through an open attitude. People had to trust that we weren't coming here to show how bad they were, or how evil the ILVA was. We wanted to generate something new with them. We decided not to do interviews in front of the camera. We wanted to give people a different space, to create a different approach. What I miss in many documentary films is a more democratic view. The attempt to create a different view together with the protagonists.

Where do the pictures from the plant come from? Were you allowed to visit it?
VS: That we wouldn't go to the steel mill was clear to us from the beginning. The ILVA was only supposed to be the background. We found this footage, which was from an image video, and didn't expect it to be so great, so artistically sophisticated in production. We were less interested in the content than in the texture. It shows an exaggeration of the moment, as if one wanted to establish a new religion here. That's why we took away the original sound and added our own music.

Could you tell us more about the editing process? Was a fragmentary, episodic form planned from the beginning?
VS: In editing, we went with the flow of the river. It's not always clearly determined, it flows, it swirls, there's a sudden end, you dive to reappear in another place. We didn't want to explain too much in detail, we didn't want to over-emotionalise. The concept was to tell a story from fragments. The common thread was the idea of how to survive in such conditions and in this world.

You connect people and places that barely touch in reality. The young woman who lives in the old town has hardly anything to do with the people on the river, and even less with the people from the "Case bianche." How was it for you to discover these different social environments?
VS: We didn't realise that with the huge industrial area, there was also this huge housing area of the "Case bianche." This is a space with a lot of friction, where you can explore a lot. It was interesting to find out how the housing area is connected to all the other social spaces of the city.

FB: The people living in the "Case bianche" were displaced from the centre of the city. When you are there, you understand the dynamics behind it and feel how far they are from the rest. The city has lost its social centre.