“Of Silence and Gold” by Ivan Butel: portrait of “Cha” Sebastian Rodriguez, a champion beyond good and evil

It took Ivan Butel almost twenty-five years to come to terms with this story, the subject of his first novel. Two decades during which he approached his enigmatic subject, gained his trust and tried to break through his silences. In 2001, marked by the violence on the sidelines of the G8 in Genoa, where he shot a film, the screenwriter and documentarian began to take an interest in the journey of “Cha”, the Paralympic swimmer Sebastian Rodriguez, crowned with five gold medals at the Sydney Olympics.

“I recognized something in this story, it brings together ingredients that are familiar to me, it is part of what built me… I want political stories, stories that lie beyond the good and evil, to use the title of Nietzsche’s book. Beyond good and evil, this is what I recognized in Cha’s trajectory. he writes at the beginning of “De silence et d’or”.