THE FILM
The life and adventures of the explorer Alex Bellini, who has crossed oceans, deserts, glaciers and continents to overcome his limits, illuminate his shadows and seek a possible way beyond the pitfalls of the human condition. The docu-film will be shown on Rai Tre on Friday 25th of November at 4:05 pm
A VERTICAL JOURNEY
ALEX BELLINI throughout his life has tried to overcome the limits that nature has imposed on human beings. He rowed across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pacific in a 6-metre boat, unassisted.He ran 5400km from Los Angeles to New York, two marathons a day for 70 days. He is the first to have crossed the largest glacier in Europe in winter. Initiation rites that led him from the land of his birth, Valtellina, to encounter wild and unexplored places.Passing experiences that made him grow. Alex’s is not just a horizontal, external and exploratory journey. It is above all a vertical journey inside his interiority. He has an athlete’s body, an ascetic’s rigor, an icy gaze, but it is in the depths of his soul that unique psychological and human resources are hidden.“I have traveled more kilometers inside of me than I have traveled outside” is the phrase with which he likes to describe his life. Because Alex’s research is made of sacrifice, resistance, resilience and curiosity, but also of deeply spiritual qualities that have saved and helped him in difficult times.
LIGHT UP THE SHADOWS
In 2008, after crossing 18,000 kilometers of the Pacific Ocean, a few hours after arriving in Sydney, he gave up completing the undertaking to return home safe and sound. In 2017 in the middle of the glacier in Iceland he had to abandon the sled that guaranteed his survival and lighten himself of the superfluous because it had become useless ballast. It can be a piece of equipment or a part of himself, the extreme conditions he has thrown himself into in life have taught him to let go of something for a greater reward. To seek the silence of the mind to obtain presence in the “here and now”. To find in suffering a tool to go beyond the confines of the body.Some call him crazy, some self-centered, but Alex’s journey is only possible at the cost of looking inside his shadows and fears. Looking for a new courage, which makes you accept fragility and renunciations. And even today that he is busy with his wife Francesca in the descent of the 10 most polluted rivers on earth, his experience is still at the center of his environmental dissemination: human beings are part of a historic rite of passage that could lead them to disappear or experience a new relationship with nature.
DIRECTOR’S AND PRODUCTION NOTES
The film recounts Alex Bellini’s exploits from his early years to his latest environmental explorations. It consists of interviews, beauty shots and, above all, the video archive shot by Bellini during his adventures. This documentation allows an intimate look at the protagonist, who recovered during the actions on the boat, in the glaciers and in other places, granting otherwise impossible access to an operator. In the solitude of the oceanic days all the emotions that Alex experienced emerge, while the interviews with his wife Francesca Urso Bellini, his father Nino and his friend Folco Terzani help to understand the motivations and background of his exploits.
Music: Rai Com
Editing: Matteo Cusato
Research: Pierpaolo Pistoia
