CittàGiardino

CittàGiardino is a film that addresses the tricky question of accommodating immigrant minors in Italy, in the Sicilian hinterland, often the first stopover after crossing the Mediterranean. The film tackles the subject without resorting to news reports and individual cases, and the movie’s form seems guided by the architectural rigidity that accommodates the changing, growing bodies of these groups of teenagers. In shots that stretch time and highlight its apparent circularity, a movement begins to take shape that will eventually prove to be the only possible gesture to counter the paralysis to which the boys are condemned. A laboratory film championed by a free and inquisitive gaze that manages to emphasise the distortions transforming this temporary stay in the Help Centre into a motionless, depressing odyssey.

Daniela Persico
Programmer and critic