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Happiness is blue

Two siblings, Sonia and Samuede, of a Nigerian mother and an Italian father, are becoming two potential stars of the Italian national swim team. Two black kids that swim, facing racist fake scientific theories about the impossibility of black people having a swimming career.
They started swimming when they were children with UISP (the Italian Sports for All Union) which still supports them to this day. The short documentary “Happiness is blue” follows these two during their trainings, outside school, in their neighborhood in Bologna. It ends with a swimming race, with them on a diving board suspended in front of their future.

  • Enza Negroni
    Director
  • Valeria Consolo
    Producer
  • Uisp Emilia-Romagna
    Co-producers
  • Samuede Andreis
    Key Cast
  • Sonia Andreis
    Key Cast
  • Corrado Iuvara
    Editing
  • Vittorio Martone
    Communication and promotion
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    La felicità è blu
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Genres:
    Inclusion, Migration, Social issues, Sport
  • Runtime:
    15 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    July 31, 2018
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    Italian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Progetto MigrArti
    Venice, Veneto
    Italy
    September 1, 2018
    Italian Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Terra di Tutti Film Festival
    Bologna, Emilia-Romagna
    Italy
    October 13, 2018
Director Biography - Enza Negroni

Enza Negroni was born in Bologna in 1962. She took her first steps as a videomaker in the Eighties, in the same city she attended DAMS and directed short films. Director, screenwriter and producer, she debuted her first feature film with Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo, winner of the "Efebo d'argento 1996", the "Stella D’argento Mercedes" City of the Castel, the City of Rovigo Award, the Prix Jeune Jury and Prix du Public 1996 Villerupt-France, Rayon D'Argent 1997 Haiange- France.
In the Nineties she directed the Pilastro Cinematographic Laboratory of the City of Bologna, with which she presented Rotta per il Pilastro, a short film written, interpreted and directed by the students of the Laboratory, the youth of the suburban district in Bologna. For the City of Bologna and the Progetto Giovani she designed and created the "Experimental Audiovisual Laboratories," directing the fiction lab. She was president of the jury for the Visioni Italiane festival in 1997 and of the Bra Festival of short films in 1998 and presided over the jury of the Casa Rossa award in Bellaria in 2009.
For about thirty years she has been working on various cinematographic languages, from social and biographical documentaries to art and history, with in-depth studies in film laboratories she has done in different social contexts. She is co-founder and, for several years, president of the DER association: Documentarians Emilia-Romagna. Among her main titles are: Lo chiamavamo Vicky (2011), Laura Bassi, una vita straordinaria (2011), Visioni d’Italia (2013), La mescolanza dei semi (2014), La prima meta (2016), Shalom! Viaggio nel Coro Papageno (2017).

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Director Statement

This short film project follows an authorial line linked to the themes of integration, after two projects in the Dozza prison of Bologna, one on the rugby team entitled La prima meta and one on the chorus entitled Shalom, which recount the experiences of intercultural meeting connected to sports and music in prison.
This possibility of telling a story about a place like a swimming pool, accessible to all but also circumscribed, inside of which the stories of two young people who choose sport, swimming, as an identity value upon which to create themselves, was fascinating and opened many perspectives of audiovisual and cinematographic narration. The social redemption that comes from the second generations is really strong; the desire to win is a metaphor, as if life’s competition must also pass through these swimming competitions. To make it in the competitive context of swimming - which doesn’t have many memories of successful black athletes in its history - represents the new that advances and clears away the old discriminations and forms of racism. The two protagonists open the way for others who will come after them, with their victories they give confidence to the younger ones, in an environment that must change, especially within itself.
A creative team of collaborators with whom we’ve worked for years has accepted this challenge: a short story, dedicated to the young second generations, and their excellences, which in its narrative process must contain the life of the two siblings at the height of their young age, with their typical anxieties of adolescence and of their being born in Italy, by an Italian father and Nigerian mother. They have a double passport and a double possibility. A dual citizenship that facilitates travel, relocation, their desire to be citizens of the world. This reality and this sport can facilitate integration and being together wherever you live.