Sept. 19 – From Mozambique to Iceland, passing by Italy: this is “Maputo, a low budget dream,” the documentary film that will represent Italy at the Rejkyavik International Film Fest September 25 – October 5. The movie reveals, through some of its most significant activists, the life in a city that is “underground Africa, a cosmos of life, suffering and hope,” explains Mario Martinazzi, director of the film and co-author of the subject along with Timi Gaspari, an Italian resident in Mozambique. The African country was chosen for its “its strong economic growth, and the local and Western-inspired lifestyles that coexist in with prosperity. But it is also a country with which Italy has always had important commercial and diplomatic relations,” an example above all is the mediation role adopted by the Community of Sant’Egidio to put an end to the bloody civil war of 1992. “Maputo, a low budget dream” doesn’t offer an Eurocentric gaze, often distorted, of Africa’s reality: the narrator, Mambucho, is a local film director, who feels the urgency to speak of his city with a low-budget film (hence the title) that faces growing difficulties. It’s a sort of meta-documentary, as Martinazzi explains, “I didn’t want to tell the story of the African poor and sick, but of the vibrant, hopeful youths that face everyday hardships with a smile. In Maputo, life can be hard, and it’s easy to die; and many of the characters that appear in the film are no longer among us. The intent of our film was to understand how people live in a country where hope for a better future is a crucial element of everyday life. What I found in this chaotic cosmos seemingly devoid of meaning is poetry and life.” The movie’s universe offers a glimpse into Maputo’s reality: “a guitarist shooting a video clip, an old guard to a movie theater that has been closed for years, the people who party every night in the nightclubs on the bay, and the people who live in the largest landfill in the country.”
