Section: Art and ethics in the fight against COVID-19

Winner: Luigi and Ambrogio Crespi for the documentary "A viso aperto"

The jury awards the Res Publica 2020 International Prize in the Art and Ethics sector against Covid-19 to the brothers Ambrogio (director) and Luigi (screenwriter) Crespi for the documentary A Viso Aperto. The jury admires the documentary for its ability to combine, both in the narration and in the film, the key concepts of the Award: civic sense, commitment to the common good, and application to others.

The Crespi brothers bring the link between patients and healthcare personnel in action to the attention of the general public - both a viso coperto, che lentamente diventa viso aperto for those who know how to interpret emotions and feelings through the movement of the eyes. The presence of patients in the documentary is subliminal: for ethical reasons the authors focus on the psychology of the patient and his illness, not on suffering. The Jury appreciates that the Crespi brothers avoid easy scenes of intrusion into the patient's anguish: clearly the authors are not looking for notoriety in the social media.

The jury therefore admires that the documentary A Viso Aperto avoids thrilling frames: moans of patients in intensive care under an oxygen mask, desperate for air. With dignity, there is not even a mention of the extreme consequence of the disease: bodies in the morgues, coffins piled up in the sheds, Army trucks headed for cemeteries. Even if all this is assumed, nothing is exposed.

Instead, the Crespi brothers prefer interviews with doctors, especially on their responsibilities in the face of an initially unknown virus, forced by the emergency to make therapeutic choices never studied in textbooks. The film explains that while advanced medical equipment is needed to save the infected, the human element is what best leads to overcoming the crisis – the warm affection of the staff who, with a smile and a touch of the hand, convey hope and support.

The Jury also appreciates the documentary for how it shows the progressive success in the three episodes of the fight against the pandemic: discovery, containment, therapy. Through this symbolic journey, the documentary explains why, despite the inevitable problems, it is appropriate to study the Italian experience. After China, at the origin of the tragedy, Italy was the first country affected on a large scale. A Viso Aperto shows that this unenviable privilege brings lessons to the whole world: the importance of preventive choices (mask, quarantine, distancing) which allow us to privilege health and the economy at the same time; the role of therapy, with the great desire to defeat the virus by basing treatments on data, facts and (as admitted by an interviewed teacher) errors; and the will to innovate, learning from moments of success and failure, in Italy and elsewhere.

The documentary ends on a note of photogenic optimism: the illustrious figures of national medicine slowly take off their masks, symbolically showing the defeat of the virus. In retrospect the message is premature, as current events indicate. However, the jury of the Res Publica Prize interprets these episodes in a cathartic way. They show that no healthcare facility in the world faces the drama of Covid-19 without consequences, even if there are healthy breaks between one outbreak of the virus and the next. The liberation of the face from the protective fabric does not mean the end of the nightmare: in fact, we do not know if or how this will happen. It is a tribute to healthcare professionals and departments beyond national borders – heroes who have gone beyond all physical and/or psychological limits in the service of others, venturing on a path whose destination is still uncertain, but with a certain will to succeed.