Film Director Alessandro Leonardi speaks about his documentary "Pizza, Democracy and the Little Prince" (Co-Directed by Elena Horn) at the Sedona International Film Festival.

Profound discoveries and new friendships are made during interactions between Syrian children seeking refuge in Istanbul, and international students, volunteering in Turkey over their summer holidays. As these unlikely pairings are thrust together the Syrian refugees surprise and overwhelm their international counterparts with their bravery, humour and humanity showing above all that they too are just children.

A group of Syrian children living as refugees in Istanbul are each paired with an international student to converse and share some life stories. Despite the chaos and difficulties these young refugees have endured fleeing their war-torn home nation they show that they have retained their grit, tenacity and sense of humour. As conversation flows between the series of improbable duos it becomes evident that though there might exist a number of cultural and linguistic barriers ultimately there is more common ground than one might have previously thought. Bonding over pizza, football and an Arabic copy of the little prince amongst other things the young refugees make this realisation inevitable and champion their own resilience and humanity through a series of endearing encounters with their international counterparts.

The interview you can see above was made at the 2019 Sedona International Film Festival. Alessandro traveled all the way to the US and presented the film.

It was a sensational festival. You could truly feel the love for filmmaking in the crowd.

We were blown away when we were told that we received the price for Best Short Documentary at Sedona Film Festival. It was a real surprise for us and a great success for the film.

This short film is very precious to us, because the producer really gave us great freedom in the concept of the documentary. This is rare in the filmmaking world. So both the shooting and the editing were truly enjoyable process. Even though we had to manage ten languages for the film.

We hope, we could make you a little bit curious about this documentary.

Enjoy your evening!
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Yours,
❄️ Elena & Ale ❄️