(Adnkronos / Cinematografo.it) – “This Pope has a universal language: he speaks to both believers and non-believers. Everything he says from start to finish belongs to me. His speeches are universal and our politicians should learn to make them ”. Word of Gianfranco Rosi who in his new doc ‘In viaggio’, out of competition at Venice 79 and in theaters on 4 October with 01 distribution, retraces the travels of Pope Francis by viewing the films that document them. “I had absolute freedom – says the director – It was a film that I was free to make or not. From 800 hours of material, I selected a few things and moved on to 200 hours. I followed a path of free association, not chronological or of places. It is a monologue of the Pope. When the war broke out he made a trip to Malta and there he opened up and declared his positions on the war. At that point I decided to reassemble the film following the chronology and incredibly I was able to capture the most important moments of the Pope’s encyclical “. Nine years of travel told in eighty minutes (” I did a great job of synthesis and suspension ” ): from migrations (Lampedusa, 2013, Mexico, 2016) to poverty (the Brazilian favelas in 2013 in his first pastoral apostolic journey), from conflicts in forgotten lands (Central African Republic and Kenya, 2015) to the walls that still divide (Palestine) and sacred ones such as the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, from environmental disasters (Philippines) to genocides suffered (Armenia) to nuclear bombings (Japan). “All my films start from the journey”, continues Rosi recalling his previous works such as ‘Notturno’ (2020), ‘Fuocoammare’ (2016) and ‘Sacro Gra’ (2013). transforming films made for television needs into cinematographic language. As the editing progressed, however, the need matured to make the story of the Pope’s travels dialogue with the materials of the historical archives and with the fragments of some of my films. And finally I also wanted to work on new scenes shot by myself. It was almost an unwrapping of his encyclicals ”. There were many scenes that struck and moved him. Above all, the one in the Philippines after the typhoon tragedy, but also the meeting with Erdoğan in Turkey and his trip to Canada in which the Pope apologized for what the missionaries had done to the natives. “On each trip you could make a film of its own”, he says and then he is keen to emphasize: “This is an open film, in the making. If a week ago the Pope had made a trip, I would surely have followed him. ”Of himself he says:“ I am neither a believer nor a practitioner. I have always been distant from the Catholic world, but I approached it with humility and without judgment ”. And then he adds: “And I’m not even a dreamer. I never remember my dreams ”. On the contrary, Pope Francis who in the film mentions the word dream four times: “It is nice that a man who represents religion gives importance to the dream”, he comments. And again on the Pope he says: “he has a pastoral approach to everything he says, his gaze is a guide. He is not a politician and never proselytizes. I tell a man of good will. Definitely a lonely man. In the scene of the cave in Malta all his solitude emerges: he gets up, doesn’t want to be helped and you see him limping and disappearing into the door. I am struck by the silence of this Pope, but I was unable to film him in his prayers because obviously it is an intimate moment. ”But will the Pope see the film? “I know the Pope doesn’t see films about him. He did not even see what Wim Wenders had done (‘Pope Francis – A man of his word’, doc of 2018 ed). However, they are two different films: mine has a centrifugal force that takes you outside the Vatican walls, his has that centripetal force that takes you inside the walls. For me it was simpler, it is the portrait of a man and of this world ”. Finally he concludes: “This is an open film because the war is still open. Who knows if he will make his famous trip to Kiev ”.