Film presented by BRUNO SOLDINI
As World War II is ending, a village is involved in the conflict between border guards and smugglers. Amidst good deals and bad, hypocrisies, élan vital, opportunistic love affairs and existential doubts, the story - a fresh and realistic slice of rural life - ends in tragedy.
«Storia di confine was the first feature film conceived and realized in Italian Switzerland. The subject was the «hard-times smuggling» practiced amidst a thousand dangers by the poor people living on the border and struggling to survive in wartime. A story that had to do with my childhood. The film got excellent reviews at the Swiss Film Festival in Solothurn and won the third prize at Taormina, in the midst of Japanese and American colossal and important European productions. And yet the Film Commission in Bern was inflexible: no funds, not even those foreseen as coming afterwards. «They’ll give me some funds for my next project», I thought, and continued historical research in my spare time: ten years later I published a book entitled «Contrabbando di fatica», the first history of contraband between Italy and Switzerland. In between the two there was also a series of documentaries (L’epoca del riso): I am fond of projects born from budding…» (Bruno Soldini).
