'Mustang holds a hope inside,' says the actress and director
As an actress, "the relationship with the audience means putting yourself front and center as a kind of instrument for telling stories. I know it well. I know which are the moments of greatest generosity and those when we hold back a bit, when a lot is asked of us, when we do too much, when this thing gets a response and when it doesn't." So says Kasia Smutniak right after receiving at the Rome Film Festival, for her new film as director, Mustang, the audience award ex aequo with Congo Boy by Rafiki Fariala.
For Italy, Paolo Pierobon also wins ex aequo as best actor for Brianza by Simone Catania; an award he shares with Anthony Boyle for I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning. In Mustang "we were also there wondering what it was — explains Smutniak — a film, a documentary... I remember we even put it to a vote. Because reality blends together, my real story and that of the people I tell about from my life with cinema, with narrative, structured as such. So there isn't just observation but also a structure of life. The fact that this was understood by the audience, which makes no distinctions, just as this festival made none, is a beautiful thing for me, extraordinary."
In the film the actress and director explores an important part of her life, her bond with Mustang, a region in northeastern Nepal, first visited in 2003 together with Pietro Taricone (the film also includes footage he had shot with his camera), her companion at the time and father of her daughter Sophie. A place where the actress and director later built, together with Kunzom Thakuri, a school, inaugurated in 2016, which allows children from that region to continue their studies without having to leave their families. "This story, this film, this documentary — Smutniak said from the stage, where she received the award from her friend Ferzan Ozpetek — was welcomed at this festival in an incredible way and I felt all the love and support of the audience."
She decided to make Mustang "a few years ago, when as a person and artist I felt increasingly lost and abandoned by hope, by the meaning of what I was telling and doing. In a moment like this, when everything seems to have lost meaning, what we do with cinema becomes fundamental not only because we make people think and dream, but because we have the enormous responsibility of bringing emotions to people. I too cling to the films I watch, I carry them with me for a long time. I decided to tell my story not because it is important but because within it was enclosed a kind of hope in the best part of ourselves, and it is represented by a small school at the edge of the world, where there is a community, a group of children who turn happiness into a science."
All the proceeds "from the film will go to them." In the film "not only are there the protagonists of this film, Kunzom Thakuri, my strength for fifteen years, but also my children Sophie Taricone and Leone Procacci. With this film I would like to remind everyone that nothing truly ends but is transformed."
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