Two young girls meet every day in the middle of a desert, a place created in their imagination. A space of freedom, without past and without present. They tell to each other stories. Their favorite is about the sea. Dima is is confined because of the Israeli occupation, Nina is blind. They cannot see the sea, but they can listen to it.
This short film was shot in Palestine during the second Intifada, in the outskirts of Jericho and in the refugee camp of Aqbet Jaber. More than a film, “Ecoute la mer” is an artistic project uniting artists from the film industry in Palestine, Italy, Belgium, France and the US. Catholics, Muslims and Jews collaborating in the same production process to create a short film, a fairy tale about friendship beyond borders and physical or political limitations.
This short film has been aired on Canal Plus-France and it won a special prize at Aix-en-Provence Film Festival.

This documentary was my first engagement with the world of science. It focuses on a specific person – the virologist Ilaria Capua and her revolutionary act: to disseminate her important discovery in the fight against avian flu, a global health issue, freely and without delay. It may sound banal, but it isn’t: scientific discoveries, even if important on a global scale, are often slowed down in the Western world by a bureaucratic system of scientific value acceptance and publication. Ilaria is the kind of person that thinks out of the box and changes the game. We used appealing motion graphics to explain how viruses work and why they are so easily transmissible all around the world. This was way before the spread of recent pandemia.

What does our future in Europe look like? Sahra Schill travels to five European cities in search of new ideas and concepts. From Krakow to Toulouse, from Dortmund to Maastricht all the way up to Tallinn. She wants to get to know the people and initiatives that are inspiring our future and show us Europe’s most exciting urban centres.
It is Sahra’s dream to find an innovative, cosmopolitan yet sustainable city in Europe driven by citizens who are creatively shaping their own future. Is it just a utopian dream or does this ideal city really exist right here in Europe?
The idea for the series had its origin in a documentary subject written by myself, Paolo Atzori and the German director Bernhard Pfletschinger on the history of Trieste and the value of peace in Europe after two world wars.

Unwired follows a team of physicists and engineers from the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics to Rwanda where they conduct a training for African scientists on wireless communication technology. A technology that could connect remote villages to local hospitals through antennas and radio-frequencies, on that is particularly useful in countries where local infrastructure is limited.

For 100 years Africa has preserved the legend of the Italian explorer Pietro Savorgnan di Brazzà, calling to him in the darkness with the beat of their drums. Now the waiting is over. The spirit of the white campaigner returns to his river, the river Congo. In the film, the dream of this “barefoot unarmed” explorer who at the end of the nineteenth century, dared to denounce French colonial abuse, is intertwined with ongoing examples of exploitation in present day Congo. Precious archive b-roll from INA, Pathè Gaumont and Archivi Capitolini tell a romantic story of another era that sheds light on the cynical attitude of today’s ruling powers – the colonialism and neo-colonialism that continue to plunder Africa’s resources.
The film premiered at the Italian Cultural Centre in New York. It has been broadcasted on Histoire in France and on RAI in Italy and has been screened at different festivals including Fespaco Film Festival in Burkina Faso-Africa.

This documentary explores the stories of four researchers who were forced to suspend their work and flee conflict in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. “Science in Exile” was commissioned by the World Academy of Sciences for the Developing Countries (TWAS) to promote the creation of grants and academic positions in Europe, Canada and the USA for scientists escaping war zones. The film challenges the common stereotypes of refugees. It depicts women and men with years of training and experience as they struggle to find a place in new lands – a safe place where they can continue their research and make a scientific contribution.
The film was shot in Lebanon, Sudan, Germany, the UK and Italy and it premiered at the World Science Forum in Jordan. It has won global recognition, screening in two dozens countries, film festivals, major science centres, international conferences and universities.