Giulio Tonincelli, director of the documentary film “Sunday,” tells the story of a 14-year-old girl from Uganda living in a community where a strong stigma against people with disabilities persists. The film has been screened at numerous international festivals and has won awards, including the MFF Best Camera award at the 27th Mediterranean Film Festival, which the festival awards in cooperation with the Association of Cinematographers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The award went to the film's cinematographer, Vladimir Motroi.

The film is based on an earlier experience, a journey into Acholiland, which spans southern South Sudan and northern Uganda, where I made a documentary called “Happy Today”, also selected at the Mediterranean Film Festival in 2019. In these rural regions, a strong stigma against people with disabilities persists, and when I first learned of this, I wanted to go deeper. Beyond remote research (which, of course, always remains detached), once the production was organised, we spent the first ten days of our month in Uganda scouting people and places. Thanks to a local fixer and a social worker, we were able to reach the villages of the area and meet the people directly, along with the difficulties they live with. On one of these occasions, I met Ayoo Sunday and her mother Sabina, who told us of the hardships within their family. After this first encounter, they invited us into their hut, where they told us more about their life, and we explained our intentions. 

Sunday struck me immediately, her gaze intense, and the way she seemed suspended between two worlds. Together with cinematographer Vladimir Motroi, we chose to approach Sunday's reality gently, following her day by day without ever being intrusive, trying to understand her rhythms. Naturally, our presence intrigued Sunday, and she often reached toward us through glances and smiles. At times she would follow us, but being somewhat suspended, she would also drift into her own fantasies, her own daily world, and so we became almost superfluous.

Letting her vitality, her energy, her dignity emerge, rather than a victim's gaze, was, beyond being a human choice, a natural consequence of watching her within her own world. The fact that she didn't speak somehow dissolved certain boundaries. 

And this is exactly why the dance scene is essential: it breaks through every wall of gender, language, culture. A single, global message, about expressing oneself, about being free, in whatever way, in whatever space. It happened naturally, spontaneously, and I think of it as a gift, and also, I like to believe, a way of telling us that in that moment she felt at ease. It was, too, an extraordinary cinematic moment, of devastating physical and emotional beauty. Moments that make it worth being a documentary director, and it's exactly this that I want to give back with care.

Yes, I experience cinema as human reflection: immersive, essential, visual, and sensory. I love presence. Living in spaces, among people, and it's exactly for this reason that I'm so sorry I can't be at your festival. I prefer the audience's words, their questions, their criticism, and, of course, compliments given face to face. But above all, I hope that people carry away with them the desire to dance freely!