Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies - Navigating the Mediterranean, Jan 2024

Over the last two decades, Italian cinema has turned its gaze towards the Mediterranean Sea to dismantle the narratives constructed by populist political parties and mainstream European media, which have emphasized the rhetoric of border protection, security and legality through the systematic depersonalization of migrants. Film counter-narratives to this have been effectively developed, and cinema has responded to the materiality and fixity of migrants’ bodies by composing stories in which these migrants recover their sociopolitical agency. This article provides a close analysis of the characterization in Emanuele Crialese’s Terraferma (2011) and Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) (2016) in relation to technical and stylistic forms of filmic representation. Particular attention is paid to the correlation between the aesthetic level of the films and the social dimension of the characters, which is primarily expressed through framing in which the migrant occupies the central position, establishing a dialectical relationship with the other characters and their social space.

Through the Egyptian remake of an Italian television series, the article explores the shared – and often overlooked – imaginaries of crime and its investigation that make such work possible across the Mediterranean and, in turn, cast light on broader imaginaries of law, and of the complex relations between citizens and law enforcement. In the Italian television drama Sorelle (Sisters) (2017), the sudden disappearance of her sister prompts the lead character to set off on a journey to solve this mystery. She is fortunate enough to have a close friend working in the police force, but in her struggle to conduct the investigations she is quite alone, and the Egyptian remake *Zayy ish-Shams (‘Like the sun’) (2019) echoes this sentiment. After considering how the two productions were presented within the dominant formats and genre characterizations, this article proceeds to situate them within the Italian and Egyptian formulas of crime drama and concludes that the Egyptian remake enables a new appreciation of an often-marginalized strain of Italian crime drama.

The issues facing migrants and fishermen are at the core of Vincenzo Marra’s Tornando a casa (Sailing Home) (2002) (Italy) and Rebecca Cremona’s Simshar (2014) (Malta). Both films are shot primarily in the southern Mediterranean Sea and, although they feature similar life dramas and hazardous rescues, they are directed according to different aesthetic principles. While Simshar exhibits the highly emotional tones of a tragedy and a predictable ending, Sailing Home uses a prosaic style and offers a ground-breaking denouement. Inspired by a true story, Cremona’s film helps reinforce concepts of ‘Malteseness’ while Marra’s negotiates identity concerns, regardless of the protagonist’s nationality. The Mediterranean Sea thus becomes the backdrop to unpredictable encounters that allow the promise of new friendships and can even change human destiny. The objective of this article is to draw out an iconographic and thematic comparison between these two films, arguing that they provide deep insight into current tragedies in a documentary-like, yet highly artistic way.

This article focuses on the representation of the contemporary Mediterranean space in the films La vie devant soi (Madame Rosa) (1977), directed by Moshé Mizrahi and La vita davanti a sé (The Life Ahead) (2020), directed by Edoardo Ponti. Although the two films are adapted from the same novel, La vie devant soi (The Life Before US) (1977) by Romain Gary, they present different interpretations of the two main characters, Madame Rosa and Momo. This article argues how processes of (forced) movement of people – such as Holocaust deportation, postcolonial movements, and the current migrations between Africa and Europe – have demonstrated a contemporary ‘Mediterranean space’ that goes beyond its geographical borders, but rather is strictly linked to the people of the Mediterranean who made these movements. By analysing the cinematic Mediterranean space created in and in between these two films, it concludes that movement-induced traumas are intrinsic to the pragmatic existence of this geo-cultural space in contemporary times.

Review of: The Dream, Fabio Bucciarelli and Peter Bouckaert (2016)

Brooklyn, NY: Foto Evidence Press, 160 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-99639-121-4, h/bk, $50