MOVIES REVIEWS

If Only I Were That Warrior Movie Review

ByChiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Dec 13, 2015

Title: If Only I Were That Warrior

Director: Valerio Ciriaci

Genre: Documentary

‘If Only I Were That Warrior’ is a documentary that unveils the war crimes committed by Fascism in Ethiopia. The debut feature film by Italian director Valerio Ciriaci opened the 56th Festival dei Popoli in Florence and had its USA Premiere at the African Diaspora Film Festival, at Columbia University in New York City.

The movie was shot between Italy, Ethiopia and the United States, to gather all the direct accounts of those who lived first hand this harrowing chapter in history. The film was constructed with great accuracy, using footage of the time as well as unpublished pictures, building a very powerful historical analysis of the Italian colonisation of the African state in 1935.

Valerio Ciriaci embarked in this enterprise in 2012, with the intent of giving voice to the Ethiopian community, to comment on the fact that a Fascist hierarch was receiving a commemorative statue in the town of Affile close to Rome. Rodolfo Graziani was a general in the Kingdom of Italy’s Regio Esercito (Royal Army), who was noted for his campaigns in Africa and played a pivotal role during the Italo-Ethiopian War. This dedicated fascist was a key figure in the Italian military during the reign of Benito Mussolini. He became infamous among the other colonial powers for repressive measures that led to high loss of life among civilians.

This brave cinematic jewel testifies the legacy of colonialism and its repercussions and paradoxes. Ciriaci is majestic in denouncing the injustices of the time and our time (as concerns the contemporary tribute to a war torturer), whilst establishing a liaison between two nations, to install a collected dialogue in the name of nonviolence.

Technical: B+

Story: B+

Overall: B+

Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

If Only I Were That Warrior Movie Review

By Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi, is a film critic, culture and foreign affairs reporter, screenwriter, film-maker and visual artist. She studied in a British school in Milan, graduated in Political Sciences, got her Masters in screenwriting and film production and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles. Chiara’s “Material Puns” use wordplay to weld the title of the painting with the materials placed on canvas, through an ironic reinterpretation of Pop-Art, Dadaism and Ready Made. She exhibited her artwork in Milan, Rome, Venice, London, Oxford, Paris and Manhattan. Chiara works as a reporter for online, print, radio and television and also as a film festival PR/publicist. As a bi-lingual journalist (English and Italian), who is also fluent in French and Spanish, she is a member of the Foreign Press Association in New York, the Women Film Critics Circle in New York, the Italian Association of Journalists in Milan and the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean. Chiara is also a Professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts at IED University in Milan.

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