The Flight

Il volo / The Flight 

Silvano Agosti, Italy, 1975, 32′

“Basaglia invited me to Trieste, where he had managed to borrow a plane, wanting to take a walk in the sky with patients who had always been confined. The film is a simple chronicle of this happy day.” (Silvano Agosti)  

In August 1975, Franco Basaglia organises an air excursion for the patients of the San Giovanni psychiatric hospital. The flight leaves from ‘Ronchi dei Legionari’ airport, flies over the cities of Trieste and Grado and then returns for a landing in Ronchi, where a party is organised at the local headquarters of the Italian Communist Party. Silvano Agosti, film director and also a co-author of the documentary on the Colorno Psychiatric Hospital Matti da slegare (Fit to Be Untied), dedicates the documentary Il Volo (The Flight) to the initiative, outlining the air trip but also the expectations and emotions of the participants who had never flown before. In particular, the film shows the everyday gestures and practices of de-institutionalisation. The air trip for the psychiatric hospital patients becomes a graphic negation of the closed asylum as a place of confinement.  

Silvano Agosti is an italian director, philosopher, producer, writer and screenwriter born in Brescia in 1938. In a career spanning 53 years, he has directed films such as Now and Forever Time to Reclaim Life (Ora e sempre riprendiamoci la vita), We Live of Love (D’amore si vive), and The Second Shadow (La seconda ombra). In 1962, he graduated with the short film La Veglia, for which he won the Ciak d’Oro Award, which was presented to him by Italy’s president. In 1967, he made his feature debut, Garden of Delights (Il giardino delle delizie), which was censored in Italy but was invited to the Montreal Film Festival. In 1975, he made Fit to Be Untied with Marco Bellocchio, Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli. His cinema, the Azzurro Scipioni in Rome, has become a reference point for artistic and socially engaged films. In the 1980s, he began a literary career that produced novels such as L’uomo proiettile (nominated for the Strega Prize), Uova di garofano, La ragion pura, Il semplice oblio, and Lettere dalla Kirghisia. 

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Mila Lazić.

In cooperation with the Kino Basaglia project, which is part of the official programme of the European Capital of Culture GO! 2025.