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Some of You Killed Luisa is my attempt to decode the complex structure of the kidnapping phenomenon that has crossed my homeland, the Italian island of Sardinia. There, between the 1960s and the 1990s almost 200 people were kidnapped for ransom.
On the 16th of June 1992 the upper part of a human ear is found by a priest on a mountainous road in Barbagia, central Sardinia, while a young boy, Farouk Kassam, is spending his fifth month in a hidden cave. He is held captive by a group of masked strangers. He is only seven years old and about my same age. Like most kids, I am also terrified of being taken away from her home.
Eleven years later, Luisa Manfredi was shot dead on the balcony of her flat. She was 14 years old and the daughter of Matteo Boe, Farouk’s kidnapper. No-one was ever charged or convicted for her murder, which remains a mystery until this day.
How to tell a story bound by uncertainty? How to talk about histories that are just partially ended and shrouded in silence?
After several years of field research, interaction with local communities, digging of media archives and my family’s photo albums, I present a kaleidoscopic story mixing photos, video stills and a log of my research, where memories, sociological and anthropological observations mingle.
The outcome of is a multilayered examination that states the importance of myself as a witness of a community bound by the ever-present law of omertà.
ISBN: 978-94-92051-53-0
250 × 200 mm | 240 p | EN
Softcover
Publisher: The Eriskay Connection
Images and Text: Valeria Cherchi
Editing: Photocaptionist, Valeria Cherchi
Graphic Design: Fabian Bremer