“I was born in Cernusco sul Naviglio; My mother comes from Burkina Faso, but didn't come here by boat: What's the problem if I play a thirty-year-old from northern Italy?” A question to which there are currently no clear answers, as there are certain prejudices even in the progressive world of cinema are still strong. Alberto Boubakar Malanchino won the Ubu Award (the most important award for theater) for best actor under 35 years old. For three seasons he also had a leading role in “Doc – In your hands”, the Rai1 series with Luca Argentero. “I enter the homes of Italians with a supporting role and a character that is not at all obvious.” Gabriel Kidane, the doctor I play, represents one of the very first attempts to tell characters with a different background. When I was 20, I never thought I would get the chance to star with certain colleagues or in a certain type of prime-time story. Nowadays it is not easy for non-white people to take on leading or supporting roles. This applies even more to women: they run the risk of falling into an eternal and systematic cycle: Black woman equals Nigerian, equals prostitution. We have to make big progress there.”
Alberto Boubakar Malanchino, Italian father and mother from Burkina Faso, was born in 1992 and grew up in the hinterland of Milan: “I never doubted that I was Italian, but as I got older I started to consider things other than my skin color see, which increasingly became an association.” of a socio-cultural and identity-related affiliation. I found myself in situations where my color became my identification.”
The same applies to acting roles: “No can be accepted.” But if the color of your skin prevents you from being a Milanese boy or a firefighter, then you ask yourself to what extent this is an acting disorder or a mental exclusion Favino spoke of cultural appropriation: He didn't think it was right that the American Adam Driver played the Italian Enzo Ferrari: “Certain stories without the right cultural fit are difficult to understand and interpret.” It would be very difficult for me, for example falling into the role of a boy from the Bronx, not because of the acting qualities, but because of the cultural identity substrate that builds my way of being. On the one hand, there are cultural sensitivities that are easier to deal with as a local, but on the other hand, I want the cinema system to give everyone the opportunity not to be stereotyped.
He won the Ubu Prize for “SID – So Far, So Good,” “the story of a second-generation boy, the son of a European metropolis, an intelligent, sensitive and schizophrenic boy, with a growing delirium of omnipotence that pushes him to achieve. “Heinous crimes to become the most famous person in the world.” A serial killer in search of fame, the denunciation of a society that pours a world of desolation into the suburbs in the desperate search for appearance, well-being and social presence. A character who offers us the folds of humanity into which we can let ourselves fall: “He can remember De Niro in Taxi Driver: a man far away from us all, and yet we recognize ourselves in his feeling of loneliness and desolation, of suffering and discomfort again.” .