Convivial Crossings in the European South: New Italian Representations

In the context of a reflection on the postcolonial changes at work in southern Europe, the paper looks at recent examples of Italian cinema that tell stories of contemporary migration in which the issue of (in)hospitality is foregrounded. It makes reference to documentary and feature films by Emanuele Crialese (Terraferma 2011), Andrea Segre (Io sono Li 2011, La prima neve 2013), and Dagmawi Yimer (Va’ Pensiero 2013) as artifacts that signal a new gaze at work, a new way of looking, both inquisitive and proactive, that scour the country for small stories connected to intractable macro-phenomena, such as immigration and racism, and in so doing foreground hot problems while celebrating the coming into history of new cultural and art forms. The paper focuses on Crialese’s Terraferma, which considers the possible consequences of the encounter between Italy and Africa in the Mediterranean. The fraught, unwanted meeting between the natives of the southern Italian island on which the film is set and the African people who arrive by sea allows for a comparative reflection on the different “laws” and practices that govern the life of the groups involved, and also offers a new perspective on how the form of exclusion that characterizes the position of the migrants on their way to the mainland may join hands with other forms of exclusion and arrested development concerning Italian people themselves. I will argue that the comparison between the two, pivoting around a reflection on hospitality in the context of immigration in the Mediterranean that disrupts commonly accepted behavioural codes, asks for a revision of the laws, written and unwritten, that keep people stuck in non-places, both existential and physical, and block survival and the future.