Pure Unknown

Cristina Cattaneo is likely to be among the people who are unknown to you at the start of this eye-opening documentary by Valentina Cicogna, Mattia Colombo, which is screening as part of Visions du Réel. Afterwards, however, you’ll likely view the Italian forensic pathologist as an unsung hero, who is fighting for the rights of those who can no longer speak for themselves.

Cicogna and Colombo’s observational approach immerses us in the comings and goings of Cattaneo’s lab in Milan. It is here where she encounters those she labels “pure unknowns”, the bodies of the dead - many killed attempting the treacheorous sea crossing from Africa to Europe - who have no indication of identity beyond the clothes they stood up in and whatever is in their pockets.

In between meticulously documenting what she can about each body in the lab, she composes emails that try to call attention to the situation and lobby for better funding and more joined up responses from agencies in different countries. Many of those who have died are from the fringes of society and for those who are not Italian, even if a loved one is to report them missing back in their homeland, the chances of the message making it to where their body is lying are slim.

The sheer scale of the work is emphasised by work on a boat of refugees which sank in 2015, leaving only 28 survivors and 1000 dead. Colombo and Cicogna catch a conversation in which Cattaneo discusses the eye-watering sums needed to do DNA work-ups on those who lost their lives in order to help their loved ones locate them.

Poignantly, we also see her team working on the remains of Saint Ambrose, the respect still given to his bones in sharp contrast to the general attitude of society towards the unknowns in Cattaneo’s morgue. The film brings home the enormity of the challenge that Cattaneo is up against, not just in terms of money for identification but regarding a general lack of political interest and will in seeing systems better connected.

The directors also bring home just how important identification can be through the case of a woman that Cattaneo spots on a TV “missing persons” show, and who she believes may be one of her pure unknowns. The subsequent contact with the family and pursuit of the truth provides some of the film’s most moving moments. The footage in general is sensitively handled, with things likely to offend the squeamish kept to a minimum in favour of thoughtful juxtapositions that bring home the enormity of the challenge for Cattaneo and those like her.

There’s an elegiac sweep, reinforced by the piano and string score from Zeno Gabaglio, as observational cutaways to members of the public - focusing on a necklace here, a pair of sneakers there - act as a reminder of what might be all that is left of us, in the wrong circumstances. “Nobody seems to understand,” Cattaneo writes in one of her emails - Colombo and Cicogna’s film helps amplify her voice and makes a quiet but compelling case for action.