The heartbeat of the exiles who arrived in Fertilia in those years and still live there is captured by journalist Francesca Angeleri, granddaughter of exiles, who loses herself here in the streets named after Istrian cities, rediscovering a piece of her own history.
It is dominated by fascist-style buildings constructed by the regime in 1936 to initially accommodate the surplus population of the Ferrara area, and then from 1947 onwards to house Julian-Dalmatian refugees.
The documentary delves into the events that have brought it from its birth to today, also through the common thread of food.
As in Magna Istria, the preparation of Istrian recipes, often revisited here by Sardinian tradition, make it possible to exercise the memory of the painful exodus and the no less difficult integration of the refugees who found refuge here, to the point of feeling at home.
Because, unlike what happened in other places, in this part of the world a tree of welcome sprouted, fostering integration and rebirth, making Fertilia a winning example of a meeting of cultures that have reached out and continue to reach out to each other here: the Sardinian and the Julian-Dalmatian, the Alghero and the Ferrarese.
The story in Fertilia reconnects emotional threads starting from the simplest and most cherished objects that belonged to those refugees, such as those found in an advertisement that moves the protagonist to the island, or those kept in a Museum of the Memory of the Exodus, absolutely vibrant with that painful time.
See: MAGNA ISTRIA (Cristina Mantis, 76′, Italy – 2010)
