Quando sei nato non puoi piu nasconderti/Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide (Marco Tullio Giordana 2005) (Italy)
6 02 2009
February 6th, 4pm, Williamsburg Library Theater
Quando sei nato non puoi piu nasconderti (Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide) engages viewers in the coming of age of a young Italian boy who takes an unexpected journey with a group of clandestine Romanian immigrants. In its treatment of a very political and controversial topic in Western Europe, this film does not clearly draw lines nor attempt to define the illegal influx of immigrants in Italy. Instead viewers are presented with an open-ended plot line, which transcends our preconceptions of life as a refugee. The young boy develops a new understanding of emmigration and immigration in an experience that speaks genuinely to the audience. Quando sei nato… captures a space where traditional concepts of migration, home, and family are challenged in a subtle, yet meaningful way. The film confronts the disparity between a young boy’s bourgeois lifestyle and the harrowing experience of searching for a better life in a country that’s anything but welcoming. The friendship and solidarity formed between the boy and his newfound friends show the outcomes, both good and bad, of experiencing new and unfamiliar facets of life.
This film is based on a novel written by Maria Pace Ottieri and was presented at the 58th Cannes Film Festival. The director Marco Tullio Giordana was born and raised in Milan and has been known to draw upon politically intense experiences he endured during the 1970’s for his films. These experiences are most translated into his works during that time, “Forza Italia!” (1977) and “Maledetti, vi amero” (1979). In the year 2000 he won an award for Best Screenplay from the Venice Film Festival with a powerfully emotional critique of Sicilian organized crime in the film “I cento passi”, based on the true life story of Peppino Impastato. -Daniela Schiano Di Cola, W&M Class of 2009
Categories : Coming of Age, Italy, Immigration and Film
