MATTEO DELBÒ
Primo sonno
On the 3rd October 2013, the deadliest disaster in Mediterranean history took place just a few miles from the port of Lampedusa. Three hundred and sixty eight people were killed when a migrant boat that had set sail from Libya sank before it could reach land.
Following this terrible shipwreck, the Italian Navy launched Operation “Mare Nostrum”, though the initiative was to last only a year. Delbò traveled for eight months with the ship Libra, accompanying it on its last journey as part of the humanitarian operation. Since the winding up of “Mare Nostrum”, the Italian and European approach to the Mediterranean crossings has changed, and the focus has shifted from saving lives to controlling the borders. And in the Mediterranean people are dying in large numbers once again. The images, zenith shots taken from the ship’s bridge, depict the rescue’s first moment of respite, the quiet after a turbulent rescue. The images do not linger on the pain of an individual. Taken from a distance, they instead convey the force of a collective movement, the toil of an entire people. The subjects seem lifeless, but they are really sleeping, a sleep that preludes the beginning of a new life.
BIO
Matteo Delbò (Pavia, Italy, 1972) is a filmmaker and director of photography. After graduating from the Scuola Nazionale di Cinema in Rome, he won the “David di Donatello” Prize for best Short Film.
He did live broadcast for many years for the first Italian newspaper website Il Corriere della Sera following natural emergencies, demonstrations and riots and following migrant rescue operations boarded on a military ship for the 2013 operation “Mare Nostrum”.
For Al Jazeera English, he has filmed a documentary for the program Witness, and has worked for Sky news from Mosul Iraq. In 2016, Delbò teamed with journalist Chiara Avesani for the project Frontline of peace, an ongoing web documentary series on the Iraqi civil society efforts to rebuild. Delbò now works with Rai, National Italian Tv.
He won the World Press Photo 2019 Digital Storytelling Contest, the Flaiano Award for Best Italian Reportage in 2007, Ilaria Alpi Award for Best Documentary in 2007.