Basketball, “with the wheels firmly on the ground!” “What a unique experience!”

The documentary Con le Ruote per Terra (With the Wheels on the Ground), directed by Andrea Boretti and Carlo Prevosti, is a great surprise. It has been selected to compete in Sport Movies & TV in Milan, next Saturday 30 October. The documentary will be shown at 4 pm in Palazzo Giureconsulti, in Piazza Mercanti. The documentary covers three months that the two young directors spent in the company of Italian National Under-22 wheelchair team, and includes interviews and basketball matches.

“The idea for the documentary,” says Prevosti, “came to me during the press conference of the 2009 Sport Movies & TV, when I met Alfredo Marson, the chairman of the Briantea 84 team, who had organised the European Championships in Seveso. It seemed a unique opportunity to tell the team’s story from the inside, but above all to tell the story of some of the players in the team. The idea of involving Andrea in the project came to me because of his experience and because of his passion for basketball.” The documentary is a co-production between Briantea 84 ASD, the sports association for the disabled, which organised the Under-22 European Wheelchair Championships in Seveso last July, and Insolito Cinema, a cultural association, made up of a group of really special people, that has dealt with these topics, for several years.

Prevosti and Boretti spent three months, in close contact with the team, even playing a few actual matches with them, sitting in wheelchairs. “We started following the National Under-22 team to all the pre-championship meetings; it was a full immersion, of more than three months, that gave us the chance to get to know the players and become an integral part of this fantastic group. The European Championship was the climax of this experience.”

“It was a great experience, particularly from the human point of view,” says Borretti. “At the beginning, I was a bit afraid, of course, I realised that I was careful with my words, controlling every expression, so as not to hurt their feelings. That was just the beginning; then, we all loosened up and, as I said, we became an integral part of the group, and we can say that we experienced the European Championship as genuine members of the national team, which I would never have expected. It was a great lesson; as Nicolai Lilin says in the documentary, “there is no disability,” the mind is the only limit, whatever the condition of your body.”

“It cost us €25 to join the team, a small sum that everybody has to pay before they can be officially accepted,” Prevosti continues. “Apart from that, it was remarkable how natural it was for Andrea and me, and then, for the rest of our small production team, to become an actual part of the team. The relationship with the players was wonderful and our friendship has continued even after the end of the championship. This might be the most intense and enthralling experience I’ve ever had. Not only because of the sensation that problems exist only when you want to see them, but also because of the ability to look ahead at every moment with a smile on your face.”