Life Is (Not) a Game, the review of the documentary with Laika

Directed by Antonio Valerio Spera, the film summarizes the last three years of activity of the “attacchina” – or graphiters – Laika, the Italian Bansky who exploded via social media thanks to her courageous and prurient pop street art.

Between the release of M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock on the Door, the still prevailing presence of Avatar: La via dell’acqua in theaters, the return of Everything Everywhere All at Once and the arrival of the sensationals Tar with Cate Blanchett and Decision to Leave by Park Chan-wook, a small and deserving film is also coming out in Italian cinemas docu-film. Presented last October at the Rome Film Fest, Life Is (Not) a Game by Antonio Valerio Spera wants to be an out of the ordinary portrait of a curious and fascinating character of the Capitoline street art known as At a timewhile attempting to engage in a broad and dedicated reflection on some of the most recent evils of civil society, related above all to health, politics and human rights.

Our local Banksy

The first fundamental question of the film is: who is Laika? Just like the legendary stop motion animation studio founded by Phil Knight (and led by his son Travis), the choice of the name Laika refers to the first dog sent into space in 1957, but it is more a conceptual inspiration than a concrete one. The mission set by the Roman artist – who prefers to be described as “attack” – is to have the broadest possible picture of the situation, observing from within but also from above the mechanisms and problems of today’s world. Broad means general and never generic, that is, open to the universality of the fundamental issues addressed, not only purely Italian.

From above, on the other hand, it tends to underline Laika’s constant search for a situational picture that is as pragmatic as possible, capable of reflecting an effective and urgent criticality. She does so by experiencing first-hand the society she belongs to, Laika being a stage name and her true identity unknown, and informing herself as a citizen of the world about the humanitarian situation around the globe. Once the theme to work on has been chosen – whether it be characters or topical subjects -, Laika develops his work – usually excellently made posters and then glued to the walls of Rome (for this he “attaches”). She walks around in a mask and red wig, dressed in a painter’s overalls with the hood up. She wants to be recognized and together represent a mystery.

But also helping to ensure that some things are talked about: racism against the Chinese community in the first period of the Coronavirus pandemic (the #Jenesuispasunvirus poster is famous), the growing diffusion of No Vax at the time of administering vaccines or torture and of the abuses experienced by the deceased Giulio Regeni it’s yes Patrick Zaki in Egyptian prisons (the poster in which the former embraces the latter with the inscription “this time everything will be fine”). About her Her aptitude for concealing her identity, her so reasoned street pop style and her habit of “releasing” her works so pregnant in disparate places have given her the popular nickname of Banksy Italianwhich one must admit suits her quite a bit.

The Game

With a pop and sincere gaze, between contamination of styles and the desire to give the product an intellectual aura, Spera enters the life and everyday life of the artist following his blitzes and his interests closely. She doesn’t try to unmask or investigate the character, the girl behind the mask, because the focus is precisely the art of Laika, his creed, his modus operandi. So don’t expect to find out who the real face of the attacker is, because the mask is the greatest suggestion of the street artist, perhaps even his true face, the one with which he manages to express himself freely responding to a first of all communicative and stylistic and secondly human need. It is also for this reason that the second part of the docu-film focuses on a trip by Laika to Bosnia at the beginning of 2021, the same one that then gives the project its title.

In this report together with Spera, Laika denounces the conditions of migrants on the Balkan route, their terrible living conditions – outdoors and without food -, their dreams of a better future. They speak of their migration as a “game”: a forced and expensive gamble of money and energy to try to win tomorrow. And someone has been playing the game for years, sometimes even starting all over again. But life is not a game and play is not life. Laika shouts it out loud in the silence of his art: she puts up a poster at the border and does the same a few months after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. To tell something important with his usual vision between denunciation and work of art.