Filmmaker Monica Repetto describes the subjects of her documentary “Tevere Corsaro” as stories of “David vs. Goliath,” portraying fighters who battle for an idea or a sentiment that stands outside the plans and vision of those who govern the territory and hold real power. In an interview with ANSA, Repetto, who made the film with her life and artistic partner Pietro Balla, said these are tales of resistance against figures ranging from politicians to major landowners and large construction firms. Balla passed away in 2021 during filming.
The documentary, produced by the couple’s company Deriva Film with support from the Film Commission Torino Piemonte, debuts at the Venice Film Festival’s independent Giornate degli Autori section. Shot over four years, the film is set in the shadow of a “contemporary Rome that is contradictory and universal, emblematic of an Italian situation,” caught between mechanisms of real estate speculation—a theme recently highlighted by an investigation in Milan—and the slow, pachydermic machinery of bureaucracy.
“Tevere Corsaro” guides the audience through two parallel narratives. One follows Giulia, a young mother who, after graduating, decided to return to cultivate her family’s land in the Agro Romano area and now fights the expropriation of the area for a consortium’s real estate project. The other story tracks the battles of two very different cycling activists: Sven, a Norwegian anarchist and Pasolini enthusiast who has lived in Italy for 30 years, and Mario, a police officer and activist with the Italian Environment and Bicycle Federation (FIAB). They are campaigning to complete, officially recognize, and secure the Pasolini Path, a planned 24-kilometer cycling and pedestrian trail within the Roman Coast State Nature Reserve. The path runs along the left bank of the Tiber from the Grande Raccordo Anulare ring road to the sea at Ostia, where the poet, filmmaker, and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered in November 1975.
This dual narrative weaves together moments of hope, disappointment, conflict, defeat, political stagnation, and new openings. It is also a journey through a nature that demands protection, which the filmmaker observes “transmits a great sense of freedom.”