Arezzo, 2 July 2024 – “Sir, sir, open up”. The firefighter, lowered into the ravine by his colleagues with ropes, delicately knocks on the window of a car that slipped downin the night without lights of the Arezzo area, illuminated only by photoelectric lights. Slipped with its only passenger, a tired but extraordinarily dignified old man, who inside looks with shining eyes at whoever has come to save him. It is the little gem of a film Antonio Maria Castaldo. He was also a firefighter and for years, until he chose to immerse himself in his great passion, cinema. Director, Neapolitan by origin but Arezzo by adoption, the voice and the images of an ancient profession, that of the firefighters.
He had already brought it to the Venice Film Festival “Sacred fire”, a gripping feature film that reconstructs the history of Italy between the tragedies of a century and the faces of those who rushed to help. An emotion in the darkness of the theater, which starts again from this short film: it is called “Gli elefanti”, presented in absolute preview at the Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema in Pesaro. Thirteen minutes, very tight, in a few turns of the hourglass, an excavation of the characters that strikes.
“It’s a story he told me a colleague from Arezzo: I saw that it could work”. A story that becomes a tribute, a directorial caress to Dario Perilli, the firefighter from Arezzo who died a few months ago, he was a friend of Antoniohis end has left a deep scar among his colleagues. “The story happened to his team and I have reason to think that it was Dario who fell into that cliff.” Down, in the night of the photoelectric cells, to fish out a car and the drama of a man who had sold everything to save his wife from illness.
Without succeeding, as the actor tells in the film and remaining to live in the car: among the photos of a torn life and on which the torch of the policeman lingers with emotion. “A story of the months of Covid” explains Castaldo. The months of families locked in their homes, in which the emptiness of affection hit harder. Difficult to translate to the big screen but Castaldo succeeds, thanks to a group of non-professional or almost non-professional actors, real firefighters, and the face of Totò Onnis. Helped by the intense photography of Giuseppe Pignone. In the background, hence the title, a documentary on elephants, followed by the firefighters waiting for an alarm, capable of an instinctive social empathy that runs parallel to that of those who descend, risk, understand, save and not just a life. For the firefighters another celluloid medal. For Castaldo the confirmation of a talent. In Arezzo he worked as a fireman in the morning and studied at the Dams in the afternoon. He put out the flames, not that of his passion.
A short filmed at the Fair, “Cristina”, with a high-ranking actor like Ernesto Mahieux. Among its interpreters a President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, in the docufilm that Castaldo dedicated to Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, a key figure of the twentieth century, among Massimo Ranieri, Raffaele La Capria, Franca Valeri, Vittorio Storaro. “Thank you, you made me relive a fundamental page of my history” Napolitano told him that evening, among the audience, in the darkness of the cinema. A darkness pierced by the lights of the big screen. Which intersect in Castaldo’s life, the only firefighter-director in Italian cinema.
