'Journey Through Italy' with Oscar-Winning Director Gabriele Salvatores

Oscar-winning Italian director Gabriele Salvatores (“Mediterraneo”) is making documentary 'Journey through Italy' using material from social media and other sources chronicling life in lockdown in the country that, at present, has suffered the most deaths due to Coronavirus.

The veteran helmer, who in 2014 made user-generated doc 'Italy in a Day' based on the Ridley Scott 'Life in a Day', has teamed up with Milan-based Indiana Production and RAI Cinema on this collective project that intends to provide a tapestry of fresh first-hand accounts of how Italians are “living this dramatic adventure,” says Salvatores. The director and producers are launching a call to all Italians to provide videos, which must be shot at home, telling the story of what they are going through. The call for materials for the collective 'Journey through Italy' documentary is being combined with a fundraising campaign to raise money for Italy’s Civil Protection entity that deals with national emergencies. RAI Cinema, which is the film arm of Italian pubcaster RAI, is supporting the project both financially and by launching the call for home videos and a fundraising campaign on its channels, being watched by millions of Italians daily.

The director, stuck like everyone else inside his home, is asking to the Italian people to be his eyes and ears, and to testify how everyone is experiencing this extraordinary moment: stories of enormous difficulties and small joys, of much fear but also great strength, hope and irony. From the marvellous empty Italian squares, to the heroes on the front lines in the hospital wards, to the festive balconies, and the intimate domestic shots: a collective story in the making, still being written, different day by day - of which the end is still unknown - but that must be told immediately.

Unlike the countless videos and sporadic initiatives that are currently running on the web, 'Journey through Italy' (Viaggio in Italia) wants to offer a unique point of view: a collective and national testimony filtered through the direction and vision of a great artist who, with a real film, can testify to our future memory an authentic and complete photograph of today’s Italy, to which the future is still unknown, but that has learned to live in the present.