Saturday 7 October – Gianluca Nicoletti, journalist, and Elena Carnevali, parliamentarian, presented the documentary “Tommy and the Others” by Gianluca Nicoletti and Massimiliano Sbrolla at the Lab80 Auditorium in Bergamo, on the occasion of the ninth edition of the “Many Faiths Under the Same Sky, supported also this year by the Pesenti Foundation.
Who is Tommy? What will he be when he grows up–he that was born autistic–and his father can no longer look after him? And all the others who suffer from the same condition? How will they function in the world? Who will take care of them? These are the many questions Gianluca Nicoletti, journalist and father of Tommy, asked himself in making this documentary film. Mothers and fathers tell about their day, while holding close these giants that once were children and are no more —the ones to whom they have dedicated their lives. A sense of solitude and abandonment pervades the stories of these parents, waiting for destiny to arrive and facing a daily dilemma: “What will happen to my child when I’m gone?” Some parents, however, do not give up, plan, dream and imagine solutions to guarantee their children a decent life and real social inclusion.
Gianluca Nicoletti, director and journalist, anchor at Radio24, has turned his family’s experience into a story urging the need to talk about autism, via both narrativity and cinematography and face problems with everyday concreteness.
Elena Carnevali, parliamentarian from Bergamo, is the promoter of the “After Us” Law (voted by the Parliament in 2016) for Personal Autonomy of Disabled People, particularly those without birth family members, and Social Inclusion.
www.moltefedi.it
Courtesy photo by Clara Mammana