June 28, 2016
Considered one of the top honors for Italian filmmakers, the Italian Golden Globe is awarded annually by the Foreign Press Association in Rome. This year, New York Film Academy Documentary graduate, Valerio Ciriaci, won Best Documentary for his feature doc, If Only I Were That Warrior.
The award was presented to the former students due to “the courage, balance and the technical mastery he employed in his first feature film to shed light on the dark pages of Italy’s colonial past and expose the amnesia that surrounds them.”
His story focuses on the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1935. Following the recent construction of a monument dedicated to Fascist general Rodolfo Graziani, the film addresses unpunished war crimes he and others committed in the name of Mussolini’s imperial ambitions. The present day stories of three characters filmed in Italy, Ethiopia and the U.S.A. take the audience on a journey through the remains and living memories of the Italian colonial venture in Ethiopia.
“Their stories spoke of atrocities carried out in the name of my country, and I realized how little I knew, as an Italian, about our colonial ventures in Africa,” said Ciriaci.
Since its premiere at Festival dei Popoli in Florence, the film has screened at various festivals and venues in the United States, Italy, the UK and Ethiopia.
Ciriaci plans to release the film on both streaming platforms and DVD. In the fall, the documentary will be broadcast on TV in Italy and Switzerland.
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