Futu­ra

In the autumn of 2020, a trio of Ital­ian film­mak­ers tra­versed their coun­try to take the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal tem­per­a­ture of Ital­ian ado­les­cents. Those who were on the cusp of adult­hood, what did they see ahead of them? What were their aspi­ra­tions, their fears? If the direc­tors could dis­tract them from their phones long enough to offer an opinion.

To be fair, the ragazzi at least make an effort to engage with the ques­tions, as cam­eras encounter them in lit­tle clumps of stu­dent beau­ti­cians, farm­ers’ kids, act­ing class­es and so forth. Every­where, respons­es hang in a sort of sus­pend­ed ambiva­lence: they look for­ward to jobs and homes and fam­i­lies in the longer term, but immi­nent prospects are dis­mal. They might have to move with­in Italy to find employment. 

Going abroad could broad­en their hori­zons, but who has the where­with­al? A wor­ry­ing num­ber sug­gest they could make it as pro­fes­sion­al foot­ballers, oth­ers just want to work with the famous, and one ego-fuelled chancer expounds air­i­ly on his dreams of eco-friend­ly entre­pre­neur­ship. Bless. Well, they’re just kids after all, though it’s notable how resigned they seem to the sta­tus quo. Which is about to take a bit of a battering.

Shots of lone­ly indi­vid­u­als exer­cis­ing on an urban rooftop tell you all you need to know about Italy’s strin­gent lock­down, and when it’s open again a year lat­er, Mar­cel­lo, Mun­zi and Rohrwach­er are back on the road again. Now the kids are pret­ty bit­ter that they got a lot of the blame for Covid’s spread, and after being cooped up for so long they’re keen not to waste anoth­er minute. 

We see footage of youth­ful sit-ins and protests, but when the crew pitch­es up in Genoa, a film which has been rea­son­ably absorb­ing but some­what come-as-you-are thus far, sud­den­ly acquires a sharp­er edge. It’s 20 years since the 2001 G8 sum­mit in the city, a car­ni­val of anti-cap­i­tal­ist demon­stra­tions turned very
sour when riot police bru­tal­ly laid into pro­test­ers inside a local school. What do today’s lot think of those events? Turns out there might be a lim­it to how much they want to rat­tle the cage.

There’s gen­uine ten­sion in the air as the respon­dents feel a slight­ly goad­ing tone from their inter­view­ers, and it makes one wish there’d been a bit more con­fronta­tion else­where in the movie – like the argu­ment that breaks out in the young offend­ers’ unit between those for and against the abo­li­tion of mon­ey. Too often here it’s the mouthy ones who get to hold court, which is to be expect­ed, yet the Genoa sequence shows the dra­mat­ic div­i­dends from a more focused approach.

To some extent, there’s a chance missed here, but the film is nev­er­the­less swoon­ing­ly shot on 16mm, which deliv­ers some gor­geous atmos in Venice, Milan and Napoli, while giv­ing the ado­les­cents’ faces a painter­ly pres­ence through­out. Some still look like chil­dren, oth­ers old folks in the mak­ing, and whether beau­ti­ful or home­ly, all are lov­ing­ly pre­served in this telling moment of possibility.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.