When I was at school, I kept hearing the story about all roads leading to Rome and I always thought that it was just a saying, a product of legends, anachronistic. Perhaps because I wasn’t born in Rome and before coming to live here I had already visited big cities where the “racial mix” had already been consolidated for years. Or perhaps because as a good ol’ southern boy, I can boast about a myriad of relatives who emigrated around the world but none of which chose Rome as a destination, maybe because they considered it too southern, or rather, not northern enough.
But after my fair share of moving around, I “immigrated” to Rome and was immediately attracted by a neighbourhood full of foreigners where some of the older southern Italian immigrants who did decide to move to the capital, feel threatened by the competition of the new arrivals. I think the world has been spinning like this for a long time.

So, I changed my mind and discovered how much truth there was in that old proverb. Because today Rome may not be the preferred choice of destination but it is certainly a thoroughfare to northern Europe where those who decide to leave their homelands hope to find a warmer welcome. This isn’t so much because Italians are racists, but perhaps because Italians still have to get used to this new role reversal, where they aren’t immigrants in search of a welcoming country, but citizens of a host country.
This may be the reason why the story told in the film is new and surprising. It shows how even here in Italy an immigrant can see his dream of earning a living with his own skills come true and not have to get by with jobs that Italians are usually too snobbish about doing.

This is what happened with our musicians and I must say that meeting each one of them was an extraordinary encounter with a person that even alone, with his or her personal story, could have become the star of the film.
As I counted them, I discovered that along the way, we had met over thirty musicians, too many for “just” one film… And there were as many instruments to choose from in order to complete the orchestra. This is what the film is all about: an orchestration of many individual stories that crossed each other thanks to music.

I have to confess that I am not a historian of music like many other directors who make “musicals”. For this reason, it was much easier not to resist the temptation of telling the musician’s story as people first and musicians second. I did this by entering into their daily lives trying to evoke the universe of memories that each one of them carries in their hearts, but at the same time highlighting their current realities and how they feel about being Italian, or rather Roman, citizens without ever having to put aside their origins but rather giving their origins more value thanks to music.

At one point, when I saw the images that I had shot, I thought that perhaps it would be better to tell the stories of people who left their homelands to seek their fortune elsewhere, concentrating on the more dramatic aspects such as painful separations, sacrifices, denied rights, and racism. The stories that usually have a bad ending. It’s what everyone expects.
But I found myself witness to and participant of a story about immigration that, in spite of everything… has a happy ending, a very happy ending! And maybe – I told myself – in these times of unrest, it might be important to tell a story like the one of the Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio: a story with a happy ending. A true story.

Agostino Ferrente – Director of the film and President of Apollo 11