TFV speaks to Mohammed Soudani, who’s receiving Locarno’s Premio Cinema Ticino.
At the acclaimed filmmaker’s request, we meet at his home in Minusio, near Locarno. It’s a place
that’s very dear to him, as he explains when we first arrive: “Tiziana and I built it. Well, we
had it built. Mainly to her specifications. My main contribution was adding the swings and
the pool.”
Tiziana, his late wife, was a powerhouse in the world of Swiss film production,
including co-productions with Italy (she worked with filmmakers like Alice Rohrwacher and
the D’Innocenzo brothers), and he still sometimes reverts to the present tense when he
mentions her, as though that fateful day in January 2020 never took place. In fact, he still
talks to her every day. They met shortly after Soudani, born in Algeria in 1949, relocated to
Switzerland in his early 20s, first making a name for himself in the Italian-speaking region as
a soccer player. Already trilingual at the time (in addition to Arabic and French, he learned
German in school), he quickly picked up the local dialect – during our conversation, he slips
into Ticinese when he gets particularly carried away – and using it to his advantage: during a
match, he responded to a racist taunt by scoring a goal and then saying to the heckler, “Use
that word again, and I’ll score another one.” So well-integrated is he, he’s commonly known
among friends as “il Dani”, a typical Swiss-Italian nickname.
There’s a reason we’re talking to him: he’s receiving the Locarno Film Festival’s Premio Cinema
Ticino, an award first introduced in 2009 and subsequently given every two years to an
important film professional with ties to Ticino. In 2013, Tiziana Soudani accepted one on
behalf of Amka Films, the production company she and Mohammed founded in 1988. Today,
their daughter Amel, whose name inspired half of the company’s moniker, serves as the CCO
and main producer. (The other half of “Amka” derives from her sister Karima, who works in
the medical field).
“I’ll have both girls with me, in case the prize is too heavy,” Soudani says
with a chuckle. He’s thrilled to receive the award, an acknowledgement for a career spanning
multiple decades, during which he not only produced and directed, but also trained new
generations as a teacher at the two major film schools in Ticino, SUPSI and CISA. “We
worked hard,” he says, referring to his creative partnership with Tiziana, before casting his
mind back to his early days as a cameraman and director of photography. “I had to work hard,
to prove I was up to the task, because even back in Algeria I had to deal with racism. And
once I started working in Ticino, it transpired that I was good enough, because they would give
me gigs at the Arena in Verona and La Scala in Milan.” And while there may have been
frustrations along the way, he’s in a good mood when he remembers them, with one phrase
that pops up regularly during our chat: “I had fun.” Accepting the award in Piazza
Grande, one of the main cultural symbols of the region he’s called home for five
decades, will be even more fun.
The Film Verdict at Locarno Film Festival 2023.
