Teatro di guerra

1994: the war in former Yugoslavia has been going on for three years. A young actor/director, Leo, is in Naples to rehearse the play he wants to put on in one of the small theatres of Sarajevo. Leo’s group has little money and few facilities. They operate from a derelict theatre, that is like a small fortress in the narrow streets of the Spanish quarter of Napels. The play is Aeschylos’ The Seven against Thebes, a play about a siege and a war between brothers with fatal consequences.Mario Martone is himself a highly regarded avant-garde theatre-maker and has also been a famous Italian film-maker since he made Morte di un matematico napoletano (1992). In Teatro di guerra he combines both disciplines with elegance. The film is a complex and subtle reflection on the void and the lack of understanding that war brings. The drama is made up of four layers; the characters in the play, the struggles within the theatre group, the battlefield of the poor district of Naples plagued by crime, and theinvisible world of the Bosnian conflict. The frustration and the paralysing feelings that Leo experiences during the production of the play, are a reflection of a Europe that watches while Yugoslavia falls prey to civil war.