Photo by Marco Bellucci
What is the basic idea behind the TV film “Chiara Lubich, Love Conquers All”? What does the story of the beginnings of the Focolare Movement have to say at this time? The film will be aired on RAI 1 on January 3, 2021, in prime time.
It is a film of great actuality, that speaks to all of us, offering universal fraternity brought by Chiara Lubich as an antidote to the evil of this time. This, in extreme synthesis, is the message that emerged during the press conference for the presentation of the TV Film “Chiara Lubich, Love Wins All” to be broadcast on Rai Uno on January 3, in prime time. In attendance were the heads of Rai Uno and Rai Fiction, Stefano Colletta and Maria Pia Ammirati, the producer of Eliseo Multimedia Luca Barbareschi, the protagonist Cristiana Capotondi and the actress Aurora Ruffino. Maurizio Fugatti, president of the Autonomous Province of Trento, where the film was shot, also gave his contribution.
“It’s a film that in this time of suffering, so difficult for us because of Covid, becomes a great metaphor for hope, for courage. A group of young girls who decide to believe in a dream. When? During the war”. For Luca Barbareschi, this is the challenge on which he decided to focus, producing the story of Chiara Lubich – “I hope that this film will be seen in this key in which the figure of Chiara (…) becomes a symbol of simplicity and passion, of courage, of the desire to bring people together. It is the symbol of the hearth, of being around the fire, around a light”.
Giacomo Campiotti agrees, but also confides that this was the most difficult screenplay for him so far, though an exhilarating undertaking. “I tried to give my contribution by telling a story for everyone,” he explained. “Chiara Lubich is by no means a story only for the Christian world, but her idea was to speak to everyone.” Recalling that Chiara’s motto was the Gospel phrase “May they all be one” (cf. Jn. 17:21), he added, “Chiara didn’t want to found anything, but each of us has incredible power. When a person begins to realize what he or she believes in, that person creates a magnetism around him or herself that changes the world. This is what great characters have done. And these characters can be of great help, of great inspiration to everyone.”
“I take home a very beautiful experience, of great spirituality, all-encompassing as perhaps few things have been,” confides Cristiana Capotondi. For the protagonist, Chiara Lubich is a character who has always remained young, “because she had the strength to unhinge stereotypes, to open doors, to speak with the Jewish world, to speak with the Islamic world, to speak with the Orthodox Church. It is as if she had no memory, as if she had no superstructures. I find this very young. Then when we grow up we get structured, we have fears. She was a woman without fears. In this historical moment I think her message is of extraordinary political strength.”
Aurora Ruffino, who plays an important role among Lubich’s first companions, says that what struck her about Chiara and her companions was how they also lived with the uncertainty of tomorrow: “A situation like ours today. In spite of this, she had the absolute certainty that things would go well, that somehow God would find a way for her to make things go well. That really struck me. (…) When you do good it always comes back to you. And she lived in absolute certainty of that.”
For Stefano Coletta, there is no doubt as to why RAI Uno chose to open the year 2021 with this project: “The film condenses in a very straightforward manner and without rhetoric the story of Chiara Lubich, a woman who had truly encountered God and had encountered Him in action, rather than in mysticism and contemplative activity. She was a very practical woman who lived in a very complicated moment like the war with the almost political conviction that every encounter deserved attention, curiosity and intelligence. It is not by chance that she was a sign of ecumenical dialogue until the end; she met extremely different spiritualities, without any prejudice.”
For Maria Pia Ammirati, the story told by the film has a hagiographic character, but not in the sense commonly understood. “Like all hagiographies, the real ones, the saints are first of all normal men and women. That’s why we start well, we start this year 2021very well. This story is a viaticum, and a positive beginning in a situation that we know is gloomy, that alienates us. Chiara’s design was that of reuniting, of starting from small societies, from solidarity, from the common good, from love, as the subtitle says”.
by Stefania Tanesini
Photo by Federica Di Benedetto