TORONTO – With TIFF screenings now underway, nine Italian filmmakers officially selected for the Festival’s program – including Special Presentations and Galas – are set to capture audiences with their fiction and non-fiction works. 

Cosima Spender, documentary filmmaker for this year’s selection “Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe” will be World Premiering the film at TIFF, with four different screenings beginning today [for Press & Industry] at the Scotiabank Theatre.

Corriere Canadese will be sitting down with Spender during the festival to discuss her latest film and experience at Toronto’s Festival of Festivals – an event rivalled only by Cannes for its ability to draw high profile films and stars, and for its massive marketplace scoured by potential buyers.

In preparation for that discussion, we’ve revisited Spender’s 2015 Documentary “Palio”, an inside look at the machinations and high stakes intrigue of the centuries old “horse race”, held twice annually in Siena.

For those unfamiliar with the Palio, there is no summary that could satisfyingly encapsulate its long history, and what in fact defines the event. In short, it’s a 90 second race pitting ten jockeys riding bareback horses, each representing their ‘contrada’ or district.

The oldest record of the Palio dates back to 1239, albeit a different course from today’s Palio run in Piazza del Campo – which was inaugurated in 1633. Spender and her crew magnificently documented the event’s hysterics and fanfare in “Palio”, never manufacturing a moment or leading her subjects on for a forced line or exchange.

As a native Sienese, Spender no doubt understood that the melodrama was in high supply, and that a respect for the history/people was the requisite approach to capturing the beautiful chaos and clash of contrade. Her knowledge of the Palio and nose for talent paid off in spades when the jockey she chose as her film’s protagonist (Giovanni Atzeni) went on to win both Palios that year.

Telling her story for A Rabbit’s Foot Magazine in 2022, Spender revisited the rare feat: “In August 2013 I came back to Siena to shoot Palio, the apotheosis of my life as a documentary filmmaker…we’d faced the intrigues of Siena’s rival factions, not to mention nervous producers who were doubtful of my choice of protagonists. But we won! The jockey I’d picked to follow out of the ten available emerged…no film crew had ever managed to follow a winner”.

More than that, Spender’s ability to put her subjects at ease and make the camera disappear is what every Documentarian attempts, but few achieve – at least not with the lucidity shown in “Palio”. Her subjects range from former Champion Jockeys, District Captains and Archivists to the fervent townspeople of several neighbourhoods. And they all carry on in front of camera as if in the company of family, baring secrets and medieval sentiments that would shock the uninitiated.

One of her subjects tells his jockey-in-training, “To be a great jockey you need big balls. So less Facebook texting, possibly more screwing but most importantly concentrate”. Another adding, “The Palio is a game of legitimate corruption. If there’s no corruption it’s not a Palio. All Jockeys are corruptible”.

The film profiles people who are living proof that culture is more than just ritual or tradition, and is among many things, a profound connection to ancestry. Spender’s “Palio” epitomizes masterful documentary filmmaking. Perhaps with a bit of luck “Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe” will scoop this year’s People’s Choice Award for TIFF, earning Spender a Michael Moore style surge in acclaim and popularity. Her filmic acuity deserves it.

Purchase tickets for “Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe” at tiff.net, Screening on September 7,8,13

Palio Poster copyright of MeMo Films; Andrea Bocelli image copyright of Entertainment One 

Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix