SHORES + Q&A with Irene Dioniso

Dir: Irene Dioniso

Italy/2015/60 mins/Arabic/Italian

A documentary which tells two stories of compassion and civic virtue on two opposite shores of the Mediterranean, through the correspondence between Mohsen Lihidheb, a postman and intellectual in Zarzis, Tunisia, and Vicenzo Lombardo, a retired cemetery worker in Lampedusa, Italy. While searching on the beach for materials for his Museum of the Memory of the Sea – a true monument to the victims of migration – Mohsen finds a body which he decides to bury with dignity, without thinking twice about it. Vincenzo in Lampedusa shares this same sense of urgency, tending the tombs of the unknown people who he buried in the local cemetery years before. In the wake of the Arab Spring, as sea tragedies grow significantly, Irene Dionisio speaks of a potential dialogue, of deep humanity that contrasts with the obscene of current history. The screenplay won the 2012 Solinas Documentary Prize for Cinema and the SCAM Brouillon d’un rêve filmique bursary. Shores premiered at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence in 2015 where it won the Audience Award.

Chapter Arts Centre: 12^th November from 1800 Book Tickets!