ERASMUS IN GAZA
88 minutes, 2021 (54 minutes for the Mediterranean Young People’s category)
Director: Chiara AVESANI and Matteo DELBò (Italy)
Production: Arpa Films (Spain)
Riccardo, an Italian medical student in his final year, goes on Erasmus. His destination: Gaza. He wants to become a war surgeon and is writing his thesis on wounds caused by explosive bullets. Entering Gaza is not easy. He has to obtain authorisation from three different authorities: the Israeli army, the Palestinian authority and Hamas. As soon as he arrives, the pressure builds. The future of the exchange programme depends on his experiences. The approaching war doesn’t help, he begins to have panic attacks. When the war resumes, Riccardo has to make difficult choices. Crossing the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip he also crossed the border between adolescence and adulthood.
Chiara AVESANI is a journalist. For many years she worked for RAI on investigative programmes such as Agorà and Report. She has worked with Al Jazeera as a freelancer on reports about the exodus of migrants. She has appeared on Compass, a foreign policy programme and America Tonight, a showcase for thought-provoking reporting. She was also a Sky News correspondent in Mosul. Since 2016 she has teamed up with Matteo Delbò on “Frontline of peace”, a series of web documentaries on the efforts of Iraqi civil society to rebuild the country. “Ghadeer” is the project’s first episode.
Matteo DELBÒ is a film-maker. Having graduated from the Rome International Film School, he won the David di Donatello Award for Best Short Film. For a long time he made live programmes for Italy’s leading digital newspaper il Corriere della Sera, covering natural disasters, demonstrations and in 2013 operations to rescue migrants from the Mediterranean. He also worked for Al Jazeera on the programme Witness and for Sky News from Mosul. With Chiara Avesani he made, “Ghadeer”. He was recently DoP on “One More Jump”, a documentary which won the Young Mediterranean People’s Award at the 2020 PriMed. He is currently working for RAI.