“Historizing the Disappearing World.”
Interview with Pietro Mereu, Sardinian director, author and documentary filmmaker. Born in Lanusei in 1972, he has made award-winning documentaries including The Centenarians’ Club, The Curly Clan, God’s Managers and Sonaggios, screened in 2025 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. He is the founder and artistic director of Longevity Fest in Costa Smeralda. He collaborates with Italian and international entities in the production of cultural, industrial and social documentaries. He lives between Sardinia and the rest of the world, always in search of stories that stand the test of time.
How did your journey as a storyteller begin?
-Actually, as a child I had no desire to listen to stories. My grandparents complained that I did not stay to “istoriare” with them, as they say in Sardinia: telling, passing on .. Yet my grandfather Pietro passed on to me something that remained, a spark that was ignited many years later. I only understood it when I started doing theater and then cabaret in Milan, more than twenty-five years ago. It was a way of being on stage, observing, giving back. Then I met documentary filmmaking, almost by chance, during film and television school. My first work was about foreigners studying opera in Milan. And from there I didn’t stop.
What does documentary filmmaking mean to you?
-For me it is the truest way of being in the world. A documentary is never born by accident. It is born out of an obsession. Not every story obsesses me. But when it happens, it changes everything. It’s like a voice that calls to you and only quiets down when you start following it. Yesterday, for example, I was in Lollove, a tiny hamlet of Nuoro with just twenty inhabitants. I talked to two elderly people. After twenty minutes they said, “Why don’t you make a documentary about us?” Who knows, maybe I will. Sometimes it takes very little to light that flame.
Do you have your own recognizable style, a narrative cipher?
-Yes, I am interested in disappearing worlds. Not the fads, but the roots. Time. The essentials. My latest work, Sonaggios, is about just that: the last two families in Tonara making traditional cowbells. It is a film in Sardinian, but it has come far: we presented it on April 27 at the San Francisco International Film Festival and almost three hundred viewers were glued to the screen. It was a co-production between Italy and Canada, with a big budget and an international standard. It was a point of arrival.
You have also worked with companies. How does the approach change?
-Making video content and making a documentary are two different crafts. Documentary needs time, listening, immersion. I never turn the camera on right away. I talk first, empathize, understand where I am. Even in corporate documentaries I bring this approach: I go beyond the surface, I look for the real voice.
Are there any projects that you have been carrying with you for some time?
-Yes. One of them is a documentary on the parable of Nichi Grauso, which I had started a few years ago. He is a central figure in the history of the Internet in Italy, and that project is still in the drawer. I don’t know if I will make it, but it remains there, like something that comes knocking every now and then.
What are you doing now?
-In September I will organize the new edition of the Longevity Fest in Costa Smeralda, with a revamped format combining science, art, cuisine, and vision. In June I will start filming a new documentary produced by my company. And in July I will start a documentary film with a Roman production company, about a great Italian personality. The name? For now it is top secret.
You are not alone in this creative journey.
-No. For the past few years I have been working closely with Maria Grazia, my partner. In many things she is better than me, more careful. She is learning fast, and she is now crucial in the development of projects. In my opinion she is a director, but she doesn’t know it yet. Sooner or later I will make her debut. It’s just a matter of time.
What still motivates you to tell today?
-I believe that stories are not for explaining the world, but for traversing it. I try to go through it that way: with a room, with listening, with respect. And maybe someday, if I have a grandchild who runs away while I’m talking-as I used to do-I know that he, too, will later return to “h istoria.”
