Sonetàula

Colour, 35 mm
Italy, France, Belgium, 2008, 157 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

When twelve-year-old Sonetàula’s father is wrongfully imprisoned, the boy takes over the flock of sheep they tend. After being insulted by a rival, the boy takes revenge by cutting the hooves of the offender’s herd, and when the police come he escapes into the mountains, opting for an outlaw’s life. As time goes by and the crimes mount, it becomes increasingly clear as the boy becomes a man that he will never be able to return to the society he grew up in, and will thus be unable fully to comprehend the transformations that occur within it. The carefully composed film set in Sardinia, starring a non-professional actor in the title role, is an example of the line of cinematography in which the story of the “little guy” is engulfed by the march of history. It is the emphasis on one central character that makes Sonetàula a focused work which, given the passage of time spanning more than ten years, can be described as an “intimate epic”. The outwardly calm but internally tense film reflects the rhythm of the lives of the protagonists, who are moulded by the environment in which they live.

About the director

Salvatore Mereu (b. 1965, Dorgali, Sardinia) studied film at the University of Bologna, and directing at the Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, where he graduated in 1997. The two short films he made during his studies, Prima della fucilazione and Miguel, were screened at the festivals in Locarno, Turin and Annecy, among others. He debuted in feature-length film with Three Step Dancing (Ballo a tre passi, 2003), which was screened at the Venice IFF and competed in the Rotterdam Festival. His debut, which Karlovy Vary audiences also had the opportunity to see, won Mereu the David di Donatello Award for Best New Director. His second film, Sonetàula, in its interest in ordinary characters, ties in to the tradition of Neorealism. In recent years Mereu has also been working as a secondary school teacher.