'Sacro GRA' – the first ever documentary film to win the Mostra to be shown in ZagrebDox competition

26.01.2014.

The regional competition of the 10th ZagrebDox shows the poetic documentary ode by director Gianfranco Rosi to the Holy Grail of Roman traffic, the famous GRA bypass.

In the company of attractive works made by Croatian filmmakers, including the world premieres of films by Damir Čučić, Irena Škorić and Silvana Menđušić, the strongest ever regional competition of the 10th ZagrebDox will show some of award-winning international festival hits.

One of them is the Italian film Sacro GRA by Gianfranco Rosi, which won the Golden Lion last autumn at Venice Film Festival. This is an unprecedented situation, as it is the first time in the history of Mostra that a documentary film won the main award.

Sacro GRA is a poetic portrayal of the life on the outskirts of Rome, along Rome’s bypass Grande Raccordo Anulare (GRA). Inspired by Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities and its complex structure, director Rosi spent two years touring locations and recording the protagonists’ lives: a lonely ambulance employee Roberto, scientist Francesco dedicated to making a catalogue of palm trees, Cesare, one of the last remaining eel fishermen on the Tiber, and Paolo and his daughter Amelia, failed aristocrats who moved from the north of Italy to newly built residence near the bypass out of unknown reasons. The film trailer is available here.