Our best years| 44mins
Director: Matteo Calore and Stefano Collizzolli | Producer: ZaLab
Focus Years: 2011 | Country: Italy
Synopsis:
From February to March 2011, 23,000 young Tunisians reached the island of Lampedusa, in the south of Italy. The Italian government is torn between its own rhetoric of closure and security on the one hand, and the urgent needs on the island, and doesn't know what to do. The tiny island is going to collapse.
The humanitarian tsunami dominates the political debate of those days: the Italian government calls it an invasion, accusing Europe of "leaving us to fend for ourselves". Northern and Southern Italy as well as the Government and the opposition deflect responsibilities”and human beings.
Very few talk about the paradox of a country of sixty million inhabitants, which, despite having been for twenty years at the centre of migration across the Mediterranean, is unable to handle a mere 6,000 people, out of the total 23,000 refugees” that is, just 0.04% of the Italian population. What is never mentioned is what is left of the lives of these young people of the revolution and the regime change they've just gone through: these are two of the most important events in the Arab history of the last thirty years, which are also two of the main reasons that pushed them to leave.
Our inability to understand their situation becomes an incapacity to accommodate them. The flow from Tunisia turns into a pure matter of law and order.
On March 5th, 2011, the Italian government and the Tunisian interim government sign a bilateral agreement. Tunisia agrees to tighten controls on its own shores and to forcibly repatriate all Tunisians who land at Lampedusa at midnight of the day the arrive. Italy, on the other hand, promises to provide all the people who had already arrived on its shores before that date with a six-month temporary residence permit, for humanitarian reasons.
After several days of absurd overcrowding in Lampedusa, the young Tunisians, still waiting for their residence permits, are moved to some first reception camps that, for almost two months, become the second gateway to Europe. There we met them.
We've spent many days talking to them through the thick nets of the camp of Palazzo San Gervasio (Pz), among olive trees and in the orange groves encircling the camp of Mineo (Ct) and also around the makeshift fires in front of the camp of Manduria (Ta).
Five of these young men, five simple guys, tell us their stories. Five different stories, but with something in common: the duress, the repression and the misery of the long years under Ben Ali and the relief of finally being able to talk about it, the pride of the revolution and the decision to leave for an urgent change, out of curiosity, in search of experiences, or simply because for the first time in twenty-three years the possibility was there” and clearly such a possibility wouldn't have lasted for long. In a word, they claim a right, the right to travel, the freedom of movement that their same-age mates in Europe take for granted.
Five stories connected by a curious and disappointed, but never defeated, glance resting on the unexpected facets of freedom, travel and Europe.
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Our best years
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44mins
Search information, ideas, subjects related to this story:
Wikipedia :
- Arab Spring
- Authoritarianism
- Border
- Censorship
- Extracomunitarian
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of the press
- Lampedusa
- Migration
- Mohamed Bouazizi
- Social media
- State media
- Tunisian Revolution
- Unemployment
- Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
- Agency
- Choice Architecture
- Freedom of assembly
- Liberalism
- Libertarian Paternalism
- Libertarianism (politics)
- Neuroscience of free will
- Right to food
- Right to water
- Two-stage model of free will
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