The docufilm presented in Venice78: “Idea born after a lesson in Santa Maria Capua Vetere”
VENEZIA It was born as a documentary about what kids can do to help those in prison. The format followed reality: 4 Luiss university students became tutors for convicted students in the Rebibbia high-security prison. Then there was the lockdown. And it was a whole other story.
Professor Paola Severino, “Rebibbia Lockdown”, the docufilm produced by Raicinema, directed by Fabio Cavalli today in Venice, was born from an idea of his. Which?
“Years ago I was invited by the University of Santa Maria Capua Vetere to give a lecture on legality. I wondered why in an area often cited for crime, boys should be interested in this issue. Instead the auditorium filled up, many remained standing, bombarding me with questions ».
«I understood that it is precisely in difficult contexts that young people want to talk about legality. And I thought of introducing a project in Luiss in which students would become ambassadors of legality in schools in the most disadvantaged areas and in prisons. Young people talking to young people about how ‘compliance with the law makes you feel at peace with yourself and with the world’, as one inmate told me. Emblematic phrase of our program which now has 150 student volunteers. The idea of the docufilm came to them ».
However, they had not taken into account Covid. What happened at that point?
“The boys asked me: ‘What do we do? We stop?”. I replied that we would find a way. And the lockdown was the key ».
“Touched by loneliness, the boys have become more sensitive. And they understood. The lockdown was a red thread that linked our and their lives. For us, the separation from closest loved ones and friends. For the detainees, the lack of family visits. Often the only comfort. I realized this as a minister when I faced my first case of suicide in prison. A woman. Her companions, heartbroken, told me of her despair at the abandonment of the family, who did not even ask for her body ».
The inmates confided their inner tragedies to the boys. Did you expect it?
“Not with so much strength and depth. But I think that everyone should approach the reality of the prison to understand the meaning of atonement and re-education. A prisoner from Cagliari told me that after having served his first sentence, married and with a child, he desperately looked for work. In vain. He went back to “the only job he knew: the thief”. From these experiences I got the idea of creating a Foundation that has, among other things, the task of finding work for former prisoners and giving free legal protection to the most needy. The teaching is: learn to see humanity behind bars and do not consider it “other than yours” ».
We have in our eyes the beatings in the SM Capua Vetere prison. In the film there is a different face of the agents. Fiction or two sides of the same coin?
«The story of those days of revolt was told to us by all those we met in Rebibbia. Prisoners, agents, educators did not keep quiet about the drama of those moments, in which on the one hand “nobody wanted to end up like a rat”, on the other the agents had the duty to contain the protests and attempted evasions. But doing it “with loyalty”, as a prison inspector told us ».
Did SM Capua Vetere fail that loyalty?
“Yes, towards the oath of fidelity to the institutions and to human dignity, which instead inspire the many prison guards in carrying out difficult and often ignored tasks. In Rebibbia I was struck by that prisoner who was out for a permit award on the day of the riot and he hurried back because, he says: “I owed it to that judge. He had trusted me. It will seem a paradox but when I returned I felt the happiest man in the world ”».
In the documentary film, does the gaze of the former Minister of Justice, the lawyer or the teacher prevail?
“I think I’m always myself. Already at 8 I wanted to defend others, out of a sense of justice. As a minister, I felt responsible for the prison overcrowding, to the point of facing the protests in Strasbourg and winning them with a series of deflationary measures that I wanted to verify by visiting numerous prisons. As a lawyer I will not forget a Roma inmate with her baby boy, accused of killing a man who instead died of a heart attack, as we were able to prove. As a university professor I want to convey to the children a concrete idea of the prison, of the many things that everyone could do to improve it ».
September 9, 2021 (change September 9, 2021 | 12:01)
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