by Gughi Fassino
Italia, 2013, 55'
Minimum Fax Media (Roma)
Drola, the first rugby team in the world made up of convicts, lives and trains in the arcobaleno row of the Turin's jail. The group is almost entirely new to the sport, and after two months of practice they find themselves playing in their first championship in the c3 league of the federazione italiana rugby.
On the pitch they are strenuously guided by the so called 'ghigna', the will to win: as the whole team fights for the try, each and everyone in the team has a greater goal to reach in order to change their fate and catch their second chance in life.
9 matches until the end of the championship, and nothing but one dream to lead the team: to play at least one outdoor match.
The try freedom documentary tells the story of the encounter between the square and the oval, where modern society and its given perfect rules meets man, incomplete and surprising at the same time.
this documentary represents a reflection on jail's rehabilitation purposes: to perceive ourselves as a team and not as outsiders gives us the chance to think about the fact that real alternative activities as opposed to to traditional jailing can actually affect the daily choices that ex-convicts are facing once free in civil society again.
The idea of shooting the documentary Liberi a meta (') (try freedom), is due to the encounter between the director Gughi Fassino, and a philanthropic dreamer, Walter Rista, a former national rugby player.
Walter founded the NGO "l'ovale oltre le sbarre" (the oval beyond bars) trying to test great rugby values inside jail and prison system.
A team entirely made up by inmates. a football field suitably provided with h poles, that 80 minutes a week becomes a rugby field, and the team, first in the world to be admitted to a national rugby federation official championship.
All of it confined behind concrete walls and bars, those separating the prison and its guests from the outside world.
Walter starts his deed in september 2011 and shortly after he meets Gughi Fassino. Gughi is mainly a photojournalist and he's assigned a reportage on account of Sport Week (saturday magazine of major sport newspaper "La Gazzetta dello sport"), and once watching his pictures printed on paper, he realizes that there is still a lot to be told on the story.
His idea becomes to follow and document la Drola (this is the team name) till the end of the championship on may 26th, and his guess was quite right being that the team, starting as an outsider, ended up in fifth place, just one point from play-offs.
To realize the documentary the troupe has been working for longer than 3 months in one of the 231 national jail, in turin, at "casa circondariale lorusso cotugno" directed by mr. pietro buffa.
The idea of such a long production was to become "flies on wall" to the inmates eyes, to be capable of recording daily life in its becoming, strongly believing on human being capability to reveal himself on a side, and to harken on the other.
Liberi a meta (') tells about the encounter of the outside society, squared with precise rules, and the convicted human being, imperfect, oval and unpredictable as a rugby ball, but yet astonishing and remarkable.