Calm and Chalk. Travelling with Mario Dondero

Images of towns, places, women and men, stories of partisans, incredible, true stories wind on. So do also pictures in black and white and colour slides. Roads and landscapes roll. We are on a trip with one of the greatest masters in world photojournalism, and this documentary aims to tell the adventurous life of Mario Dondero, a photo reporter, through his present always on the go.

A path throughout five years spent at the photographer's side, following his research, exhibitions, openings, conferences, prize-givings, various events, and simple walks.

A journey through thoughts and actions from which it emerges a cross-section of the national and global chronicle experienced in first person and at the forefront by the fifties till today. The discretion of our photojournalist and his total extraneousness towards the sensationalism of the paparazzi shines through those lucid and profoundly narrative releases. His attitude has no rhetoric, but only love, irony, indignation, exposure, and research of the truth.

In Fermo, in the Marche region on the Adriatic coast where he lived for the last twenty years, in Milan, in Genoa, Rome, Bologna, Naples, and Florence, we find ourselves hanged together and curious around the infinite facts immortalized by our protagonist. Each time it seems like being inside the world archive.

From Corrado Stajano to Ermanno Rea, from Gianni Berengo Gardin to Uliano Lucas, from Vinicio Capossela to Don Andrea Gallo, in this doc, many will try to tell what he is, moved by profound esteem and friendship, even if Mario is, as usual, unseizable. He is already shooting at a new destination with his Leica on his shoulder because he knows too well that there will always be a future next, not to be forgotten.