Douarnenez Festival: "Forbidden to dogs and Italians", by Alain Ughetto

The animated film "Forbidden to dogs and Italians" by Alain Ughetto was presented in preview at the 44th edition of the Douarnenez film festival.

Luigi and Cesira, the director's grandparents, left their native Italy to work in the North, in France.

© Douarnenez Festival

Text by: Isabelle Le Gonidec

6 mins

Migrations are one of the strong themes of the Douarnenez festival.

In

, Alain Ughetto tells the story of his family from Italian Piedmont.

A story of love – like his previous and first feature film

(2012) – and of memory.

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From our special correspondent,

It is a past that he had to (re)build piece by piece, like those walls of sugar cubes that foremen once asked Italian migrants to erect to test their skills... Parents, thinking of protecting children concerns of everyday life and the difficulties encountered in the country of adoption, told little, testifies Alain Ughetto.

His father, born in France and who did not speak Italian, did not pass on this story to him, which he himself had not received from his own parents, Luigi and Cesira (the grandmother and storyteller).

This grandmother – who died in 1962 – whose fond memories the director kept of the cheese crusts she was grilling on the stove, his own little madeleine.

Rebuild History

It was therefore necessary for Alain Ughetto to reconstruct this story from photos, but above all from archival documents, civil status which make it possible to retrace the routes of these " 

 ”, readings (notably

by Nuto Revelli) and meetings.

This story is that of a family of poor Italians from Piedmont, coal miners and peasants, fed on chestnut polenta with milk, which the grandfather forced to eat with a fork to save milk.

Alain Ughetto drew the thread from his family name, which his father had told him was that of their village of origin.

A village to which the director has returned and where only ruins remain (houses with slate roofs collapsed under their weight in a mountain landscape) and a cemetery full of Ughetto.

The coincidence between surnames and toponyms in Italian villages remains for Alain Ughetto a mystery to be elucidated...

Alain Ughetto (D) alongside Julien Pareja of the French Association of Association Cinema, during the presentation of the film to the public in Douarnenez, Friday August 26.

© Christèle Rivière / Douarnenez Festival

Hands that make 

These images of the village open the film, presented in preview in Douarnenez and which has already started a fine career: it is crowned with the jury prize of the

festival that it arrived in the city Breton.

Because he likes making with his hands, modeling, shaping, Alain Ughetto – simultaneously director, actor, screenwriter and handyman – has chosen to tell his story with small puppets for which he has made the prototypes.

All identical, with big innocent eyes open to the world, characterized by their size and a few details (the Italians all have mustaches, explains Alain Ughetto, and the French have berets) and the clothes, so that everyone can identify with the little characters.

Hands are the red thread between the generations: agile hands of men (grandfather, father and grandson) who make, give and pass on.

" 

said the grandmother,

."

Alain Ughetto's hand intrudes into the film's decor to touch that of the grandmother – the hands of the puppets are a little oversized, they are the hands of workers –, to grab or give tools;

a carnal bond is established which reinforces the memorial aspect of the film.

Alain Ughetto also lent his voice and accent, assisted by Ariane Ascaride.

The actress, who notably plays the character of the grandmother, is also the daughter of

"

Great teamwork

 "

At the beginning, there was not a film project, but the desire to know where I came from, tells us Alain Ughetto.

Then the film project was grafted onto this story and matured for nine long years, the fruit of the work of a European team of around a hundred people from Portugal to Italy (including the musician Nicolas Piovani), to the image of this story of migration to the borders of Italy, France and Switzerland where the grandfather worked on the digging of the Simplon tunnel.

We must salute the creative work of the

team and the finds of decor and staging, the work of all the little hands, including that of Ughetto, who thought and designed the setting of the film. .

One thinks of these forests of broccoli that one would think straight out of a children's picture book – and whose some 20 boxes made up the team's menu for 15 days, laughs Alain Ughetto –, or of these chestnuts round with the back as varnished which nourished the peasants.

A

film whose technique has been explained to the attentive public, children and adults, of Douarnenez.

The film also embraces the history of the 20th century: the butcheries of the two world wars, the Italian colonial war in Ethiopia.

" 

 ", says Alain Ughetto, priests who live on the backs of peasants, fascism and ordinary and violent racism of the time which gives its title to the film (a poster unearthed in Belgium, but which could also be seen in France in the 1930s).

Serious things, therefore, but which, in the fabric of the daily life of the Ughetto tribe with its laughter and its tears, are put into perspective, as in real life.

And Italian roots that continue to vibrate since Alain Ughetto is working on another film.

Another love story, he tells us. 

Forbidden to dogs and Italians, by Alain Ughetto, presented in preview at the Douarnenez festival, August 26: when there is only a potato or a ladle of chestnut polenta to share among the whole family, you have to think about leaving.

© Douarnenez Festival

Forbidden to dogs and Italians

will be released on screens in France on January 25, 2023

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