The blue sky of day is a pretty lie, an azure veil of sunlight’s refraction through gases and particles; only during hours of clear-sky darkness can we see our true position in the cosmos. This little-acknowledged truth comes to mind during Notturno, the sixth film by master documentarian Gianfranco Rosi — #IDFA 2020’s Guest Of Honour. But while decidedly «of the night,» this portrait of people and places on the borders of #Iraq, #Kurdistan, #Syria, and #Lebanon does not unfold entirely post-sundown.

Photophobia

One of five living individuals to have won both Venice’s Golden Lion (Sacro Gra, 2013) and Berlin’s Golden Bear (Fire At Sea, 2016), Rome-based Rosi shuns broad daylight: «I’m photophobic, I hate too much light,» he tells me after a #Viennale screening of Notturno. «And I don’t like blue sky. I cannot take a picture if there’s a blue sky… even a video — I have to be ‘protected.’»

«At the beginning, the idea was to shoot this film at night, because I was confronting myself with a world that I didn’t know. I spent three years there and I knew much less afterward than before I went. Beforehand, I had information that I thought made sense, and when I went there… nothing! The reportage, everything I read… So I thought, this film has to be all at night because then I somehow felt very… protected.»

Having started out on 16mm with 1993’s 55-minute Ganges-travelogue Boatman, Rosi embraces technological advances. «It’s incredible,» he enthuses. «Thirty years ago shooting at night would be impossible. But with digital, I can shoot what I see — a film of the night. At night there is always a sense of pause. Even in the war, the night is a pause, a moment of… detachment.»

«Even in the war, the night is a pause, a moment of… detachment.»

And gradually, his scope widened. «I started going to the twilight zones — I’d wake up at 4 am, and go and film.» This process followed months of intensive on-the-spot research, traveling light, and camera-less. «Filmmaking for me is about losing things, is not about gaining things, otherwise you are like a dog pissing right and left and marking a territory. It’s about choices. And when you make a choice, you lose so many things around you.»

I ask him about the 90 hours of material he amassed, most of which was jettisoned for the 100-minute film. «That other footage?» he responds, «I’d dump it — it’s out, because all the images that I didn’t use are still part of the film, even if you don’t see them.»

Perceptions

«I hate the filming,» he admits. «My best time on Notturno was the eight months of research with my notepad—writing notes, and I had maps. I was able to encounter all the stories you see now, and these stories became part of me.» Rosi followed the lives of his protagonists — including teenage hunting-guide Ali — in these borderlands, often around areas of active #conflict («I never wanted to film the #war… I wanted the war to be a background, a sound, a noise, something you perceive and makes you uncomfortable»).

He was aware of the political-historical backdrops but confines such matters to brief texts in Notturno‘s opening titles. «Those borders were somehow sketched in 1916, on a table, by Sykes and Picot,» he points out. «They’ve created conflict constantly in the last hundred years… What we’re having now is the result. These borders divide life from hell, life from desperation, life from fear, life from absurdity — but the people I met had nothing to do with those borders! I realised in these three years that I wanted to give the narration to universal elements. What I’m telling is a story of archetypical people—pain has no borders.»

«My best time on Notturno was the eight months of research with my notepad—writing notes, and I had maps.

«First I had to encounter a place, then I had to encounter a person, that reflects the ‘heaviness’ of that place,» he says. «And then I have to follow this story. It becomes a synthesis—because there are many stories in the film, it’s a big challenge, how do you compress those stories?»

Rosi has no time for documentary trends where a wobbly (or as he dismissively says, «trembling») camera is somehow a hallmark of verisimilitude, favouring composed, unmoving frames. «For me the fixed frame is important,» he explains, «because the audience hopefully can get into that frame without knowing that there is someone filming—and then be completely immersed in this journey.

Trust

«It’s about trust. When I do a frame I ask the audience to trust me that this frame’s going take you somewhere. It’s like a [musical] note, this note is going to take you to the next note, and to the next note and to the next note. And every note belongs to the previous note and to the next note.»

«In between there’s a space of silence — that you have to fill also. How do you do that? How do you film the silence? How do you film the wait? How do I film Ali? This kid has… an enormous life. How do I put him in 20 minutes… So this is something that has to be extremely intimate — somehow the synthesis of a life.»

«When I do a frame I ask the audience to trust me that this frame’s going take you somewhere.»

Quizzed on the degree to which his scenes are in some way shaped by «directorial» interventions, Rosi says he finds such questions uninteresting. «I don’t care about the difference between documentary and fiction. I care about the difference between true or false… And that’s for me what I’m looking for, and that’s what I love about documentary. My truth as a documentarist and as a filmmaker is to be able to tell the story, that the moment is real in front of me.»

«When you’re filming someone, even in the most objective way, they’re aware of the camera. The camera changes things, no matter what, and it also changes me. Placing the camera down is such a heavy burden because it changes the relationship… when you put the ‘eyes’ in place. So this idea that documentary is so objective is complete bullshit to me. Once you introduce a camera, things change. Let’s start from there, from that point of transformation—and ask, where is the truth in this change?»