I had always wanted to visit Puglia. Before I went to Naples in February, my initial plan was to go to Bari but things didn’t work out with accommodations and flights got way too expensive.

This time, I had almost 3 weeks of Easter holiday (partly official, the rest I entitles myself for it) so I decided to bought a train ticket to Puglia and stay for a couple of weeks, without much plan but one mission to make a documentary for a film module at university.

A documentary about the kindness of strangers.



Something I had always wanted to express and share with others, yet it wasn’t easy to just go out and shoot videos of people you just met. But it was about time, and this time I forced myself to do it because otherwise I would fail this module.

I had also told almost everyone I met that I was gonna make a documentary about Couchsurfing, just to put a little more pressure on myself.

I hated it when people force me to do things. The only way that worked for me was to force myself to do it.



I had been using Couchsurfing since before I turned eighteen and had to lie my age to register myself on the website. I had made so many friends on this platform. The reason I found myself in Bologna, spending my semester abroad here, was also because of Couchsurfing.

Every time I left for an adventure, meeting ‘strangers’ who welcomed me to their homes, their families, accommodated me, cooked for me, shared with me their time, knowledge and stories, showed me around their beloved towns or introduced me to their friends, all those things made me believe in the generosity and kindness of people. I wished we would trust each other a little bit more.

And that was the beginning of this project, In Puglia: The Kindness of Strangers.