After its successful debut with Mur, a 2023 documentary that explored the complex border situation between her homeland, Poland, and Belarus during a period when thousands of migrants were trying to cross, Kasia Smutniak has returned to directing a new film. Like the first, it is a documentary and will be presented at the Rome Film Festival (in the Progressive Cinema section). The new film is titled Mustang, and it tells an intimate and unreleased story that originates from a journey that, in 2023, Smutniak undertook with someone who had long been her partner before his death in a paragliding accident and who is the father of her daughter Sophie: Pietro Taricone.
That trip took place in the region that gives the film its title, located in northern Nepal, near the border with Tibet, and it is the starting point for a narrative that touches over twenty years of life. Here is the official plot of Mustang:
In 2003 Kasia and Pietro had just known each other for a little while when, with backpacks on their shoulders and a small camera, they set off for Mustang. That place suspended in time, where there isn’t even a road, becomes part of them, and there they exchange a promise: to return one day and do something to protect that culture. But the course of events suddenly changes and they won’t go back together.
Many years later their daughter Sophie rediscovers the footage from that first journey and from the ones her mother later made with her as a child.
It is in this journey that the encounter with a special woman, Kunzom, is born and with her the promise once made is fulfilled: to build a school that allows the children of that region to continue their studies without having to leave their families. Through Sophie’s voice, the story retraces over twenty years of life, between personal memory and collective history, in a journey that crosses time and generations, seeking what remains when everything transforms into that incessant flow that in Mustang they call Samsara.
Written by its director together with Marella Bombini, Mustang is a Fandango production in association with Luce Cinecittà with the contribution of the Pietro Taricone Association thanks to the support of the Unione Buddhista Italiana, and is produced by Domenico Procacci, Laura Paolucci and Kasia Smutniak. It will arrive in cinemas in November with Fandango Distribuzione, and below you can see the official trailer and the poster.
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