2023

IT

film

official programme













( narratives of diaspora )

“With The Strong Man of Bureng (75 min, Italy, 2024), director Mauro Bucci has us as he delivers a compelling, multi-sited ethnographic film born of four years of fieldwork across Gambia, Finland and Italy. By embedding himself in his subject’s world, Bucci captures the emotional and cultural dimensions of circular migration. The documentary becomes both a deeply personal journey and a lens into the wider diaspora experience—one shaped by family ties, social expectations and the longing for return. The Strong Man of Bureng offers a tough, rare, humane perspective on migration not as a singular event but as a lived cycle, rich with complexity, hope and connection.”

→Jury statment ( Fabrizio Gallanti, Julia Albani, Romullo Baratto, Teresa Novais, Vasco Mendes )

Former UN soldier Essa has fled the Gambia for Finland, where he has successfully set up a business that provides for his family. Back in his hometown Bureng, he is celebrated as a hero. During a visit home, world events catch up with him: the coronavirus outbreak jeopardises Essa’s return to Europe and his application to renew his residence permit, plunging him into one of the most serious crises of his life. "The Strong Man of Bureng" is both a contemporary odyssey and an intimate story of the deep motivations that have brought a person to leave his own country in an effort to satisfy universal needs.


language: afrikaans, english, finnish
subtitles: english