Hypothesize to be in a beautiful, hard-working city in the North-East of Italy, that we don’t know how is called. Hypothesize that this city has an high percentage of immigrant workers, all legals and well inserted in the society, as all the immigrant workers in the North of Italy are. And hypothesize that a industrial joker Golfetto (Diego Abatantuomo), who is the owner of different factories and of a private television network (any resemblance to real events and/or to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental), has fun with a racial farce: abuses, wordplays,direct sarcastic gags, all politically incorrect, so grotesque that seems hilarious . “Take the camels and go back home”, it’s the Abatantuono menace, pronounced with apocalyptic tones. But we have also to hypothesize that one day the farce will be reality and the immigrants go away. Forever. This is not just mockery nor exaggeration of reality, there’s a background provocation: what will happen if the immigrants disappear from Italy?In the film “It’s unbelievable!” (Cose dell’altro mondo!), presented at the 68 Venice International film festival in the section “Italian reverse shot” (Controcampo Italiano), the director Francesco Patierno made it happen and the characters live a surrealistic experience.
The idea of the film is resumed from a story told in 2004 in a long length film written by the Mexican director Sergio Arau “A day without Mexican” , and is resumed also by some news item really happened in Italy some years ago, where immigrants stroke against the horrible conditions of work. But what will happened if this story become true? The three main characters show us how the result of this oddity could create crisis for the entire city. The northern businessman ( Abatantuomo), who just had immigrants workers, has the production stopped and the few Italian workers overloaded with work. The cynic Roman policeman Ariele (Valerio Mastandrea) is obliged to help his old mother, who was cured by a foreigner carer, who in turn escaped. And finally the young teacher Laura (Valentina Lodovini), an apparently open minded person, who was getting pregnant by a black man, is falsely disparate when she saw her boyfriend going away with all the other immigrants, and immediately replaced her boyfriend with Ariele. The world narrate has completely lost the good sense and is walking the line on a situation that is absolutely without meaning.
Also Simone Cristicchi, who composed the soundtrack of the film, that especially in the main track “Cose dell’altro mondo” said: “ The immigrants land while the children tear down a mosque, Jesus Christ is still, he seems immovable on the cross made by Ikea” . The complaint is all direct against the disregard of the society for serious things just like scorn and racism. It’s the first time that an Italian film deals with immigration and racism following the comics line, with the possibility of moving something in the consciences of Italian, nowadays dulled by the daily routine of television . And that it’s the first time is proved by the reaction of some member of “the Lega Nord” who felt directly touched by the way in which the film deals with this subject. It’s a matter of fact that the major of Treviso, Paolo Gabbo who belongs to Lega Nord denies the shots on his own city, and also the useless polemic on the internet, useless because the film, coming out on the 3 September, has a great success.
(Traduzione di Silvia Mariani)