I went to the Venice Film Festival for the day and found myself in the garden of the world. I expected actors in fancy suits, signature hunters, public relations and PR. And instead, I found one thing that I wasn’t looking for, but that I definitely needed. A Dialogue of Kindness starring Jetsun Pema, the younger sister of the Dalai Lama and former president of the Tibetan Children’s Villages, a charity for the care and education of orphans, disadvantaged children and refugee children from Tibet.
“We are colleagues, you and me.” – says Jetsun Pema to Kasia Smutniak, actress and activist representing Pietro Taricone Onlus here.
“Colleagues, in what sense, forgive me?”
“I also acted in a film in my country, a film with a blond actor, what’s his name?”
The film in question, Seven Years in Tibet, stars blond actor Brad Pitt and Jetsun Pema plays his own mother.
The kids call her love hera word that means “mother” in their language. love her, a word beautiful in sound and meaning, which in our language sounds even more poetic. Mother in the sense that she cares, she gives birth again, who guarantees the necessary education to become “good people”.
“I only deal with children,” he says in response to a question about political relations between China and Tibet posted by journalist Raimondo Bultrini. This “only” contains the entire future of a people trying to preserve their culture, which is the only irreplaceable baggage on any journey. “When children are nervous, angry or arguing with each other, we invite them to go to the Peace Garden,” says Amala.
A place where you can reflect, calm down, find yourself and rediscover harmony. “This is a solution that a mother should offer,” I thought. A constant invitation to reconnect with the outside world and with each other to refocus. A physical space and a space of time where anger is extinguished by calm, not violence. Venice was kind to me and, as always, beautiful. I didn’t think it was a plot.