Kasia Smutniak: "Pietro's camera is now our daughter Sophie's, that's how Mustang was born"

Rome – There is a small video camera that holds a love story and crosses generations. It is the one with which Pietro Taricone filmed the journeys and moments of life with Kasia Smutniak. Today it is in the hands of their daughter Sophie, who took it with her to Nepal, to the Mustang mountains, and in the documentary it is also the narrator. It was Pietro who chose that place: “He came back home saying that it would be cool to go, I don't remember why,” Kasia recalls, without knowing why. That object became the narrative key of the actress and director's new documentary, presented in competition at the Rome Festival. A story that began in 2003, when Kasia and Pietro Taricone, who died in 2010 at 35, left together for the Mustang, promising to return to protect the culture of that region. Kasia kept the promise by contributing to the construction of a school. In Mustang, the couple's private images – the desire for adventure, the feeling perceived in the glances when the camera moves from one face to another, the joy, solid friendships and unforgettable places, the search for self – intertwine with the present, with a community threatened by depopulation and with the journey of their daughter Sophie, who gathers her father's gaze. A story that crosses 23 years of love, loss, and transformation. The film, produced by Fandango with Luce Cinecittà, will be in theaters on November 23rd. When did she understand what story she wanted to tell? "I started working on it seriously in 2018, but all these years I have always been shooting, consciously and unconsciously, thinking of documenting something that was interesting or important to me. In the meantime, Mustang was changing, with the arrival of the road, electricity, the Internet. I realized that I was immersed in a historical moment. But many years passed before finding the right key to the story. I realized that my daughter would be the most interesting character, but I didn't want to give her this responsibility. I followed other stories, the children from school. Until Sophie grew up and one day she asked me about the camera her father had." And that was the decisive moment. "It was one of those video cameras that we all had in the early 2000s, with which we recorded the moments of our lives, birthdays, vacations, births, journeys. Sophie set off with that camera for her first solo trip to Mustang, without me this time. And in the moment she asked me “Where is dad’s camera?” I understood that that would be the key to the story." Seeing the images shot by her and Pietro means entering a story known only from the outside. "It was the most difficult part, because I was the object of observation, I had to observe myself and try to find a kind of detachment. An impossible detachment, a short-circuit of emotions and responsibilities. Mur, my first documentary, was a great test. I understood that I had to be light, recreate around me a situation that allowed me to be myself. In a documentary, unlike a film, you cannot write what will happen. When you return with the footage you have to discover the story within that material. You cannot invent a scene because you are missing a passage. Editing is in fact a writing. I and Marella Bombini and the editor Ilaria Fraioli were almost in a year closed in a small room to reconstruct this story, with our emotions. It is a very feminine film, not only for the characters, but for the point of view of the story." In the film there is also your love story, something deeply personal and together universal. How was it told? "It was a journey through various stages, doubts, problems. And I have not yet reached the end, because this journey will end when the film meets the public, when this story becomes theirs too. In these years I was crossed by that culture, by that philosophy that revolves around the concept of transformation. Where nothing really ends, everything has a meaning. The beautiful things, the ugly things, everything is part of a repetition in some way, cyclical." But the film also tells a world that risks disappearing. "I felt an urgency related to the life of the school, which is about to close. People are leaving, the culture is being lost and the school is emptying. But also because there is a need for awareness to understand the moment we are in as humanity. Probably it is a film about the meaning of life. My little son often asked me: “Mommy, what is the meaning of life?”. A big question. I also asked myself, perhaps naively, childishly, the big questions to which I tried to give answers. This story will not end with the film, because it is not a film, it is the reality of things. I wanted to cling to something real in a time so difficult to face, when I myself feel completely lost, without points of reference." What did she find in that Mustang community? "I wanted to tell the best part of us, of what we are as human beings. That small community where a group of children wakes up at half past five, performs rituals, prays, sings, eats. Everything is a ritual, everything is thought to be happy and to give happiness to the outside world. What is more beautiful, more hopeful in this?" How did this journey change her relationship with Sophie, which you have made together in different ways? "Sophie grew up with this school, with me going there every year, several times a year. She grew up with the idea of that mother who often leaves, disappears, and then returns. Our relationship… I think… As you see, if I were a character, I would find easy answers. I hoped that that madness I was realizing could somehow turn around and return to her with the idea of a better world. With the idea of freedom of choice, of being oneself, of following one's path no matter what happens and not being afraid to do it."