Paolo Maria Mancini
L'altra scuola

Imagine a random school class from any town in the Italian countryside filmed by a hidden camera; imagine that all the kids are so spontaneous that they don't seem like "actors" playing students, but rather students who aren't acting at all except being themselves (something incredibly difficult to achieve in cinema...), giving the illusion that everything is happening as you watch it, that is, in real-time...; imagine that the dialogues are so authentic and so un-"Moccia-like", that they evoke an emotion that sometimes crosses into emotion... You will have fully captured the atmosphere felt in this independent film, titled "The Other School" by director Paolo Maria Mancini, presented at the Salerno International Film Festival a few days ago. Yes, because my bias of about to witness yet another low-budget movie shot with limited resources dissolved after about fifteen minutes, when I realized that the "little movie" in question was moving me...

Shot in a self-reliant manner yet with absolute professional dignity, the boys from a technical school in the Marche region (I think it's from Macerata...), are incredibly talented and absolutely believable in conveying their inner worlds as restless teenagers, without the usual worn-out stereotypes like "I Cesaroni," or various "Schools," proposed by cinema and television in every possible way. A positive and hopeful film, without the usual metropolitan gloom typical of large Italian cities; perhaps the director, aided by the provincial setting, wants to tell us that teenagers are not necessarily destined to die in car accidents or from pills after a rave party, maybe they can be saved through friendship, art, music, (the film's music by composer Alessandro Esseno is beautiful in this sense, never intrusive and always serving the emotion that inevitably reaches us in the end).

A debut film from a director completely outside the box and conformism, featuring two veterans like Franco Nero and Ugo Pagliai, who play the roles of two teachers "truly" close to their students perhaps more than their parents, and a final cameo by Mogol, another great connoisseur of the adolescent world for at least three generations. A film that manages to convey authentic emotions, without million-dollar special effects or improbable plots, certainly worth watching, with the curiosity to stimulate the opinions of other students and perhaps, why not, their parents.