Gianfranco Rosi on How His Doc About Pope Francis’ Travels ‘In Viaggio’ Is a ‘Map of the Human Condition’
Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Master documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi, whose “Sacro Gra” won the Venice Golden Lion in 2013, is back on the Lido with “In Viaggio,” a doc about Pope Francis’ travels in which the director creates a counterpoint between archival footage and images that Rosi shot himself. In the first nine years of his pontificate, Pope Francis made 37 trips visiting 53 countries, focusing on his key issues: poverty, migration, the environment, solidarity and war. Intrigued by the fact that two of Francis’ trips – the first to the refugees landing in the Sicilian island of Lampedusa; the second in 2021 to the Middle East – so closely mirrored the itineraries of the director’s “Fire at Sea” (2016) and “Notturno” (2020), Rosi decided to delve into hundreds of hours of footage of papal travels with the intention of providing through them a “map of the human condition,” he says.