Against the backdrop of a post-industrial Turin in transition and a semi-depopulated Calabria, a family of Calabrian immigrants embarks on a journey through their dual identities, seeking the causes that led to their uprooting during the Italian economic boom.
Tullio, a former Fiat worker, plays the role of a "Pavesian Ulysses" who, in his Turin-registered Fiat 126, travels through the Stilaro Valley in Calabria, his place of origin, in a constant search for rediscovery.
He is accompanied by Rita, his wife, a modern Calabrese cummara emancipated in the north, but closely connected to her place of origin and its traditions.
Like her aunt Carmela, who had arrived years earlier in the council houses on Via Artom, she is a remnant of an archaic way of life, a Penelope who spins and waits.
Antonio, Rita's nephew, is forced to abandon his homeland to work in the north. History repeats itself once again.
Between northern and southern Italy, Tullio and Rita meet characters from an archaic and forgotten Calabria whose stories intertwine with the places and memories of a distant industrial Turin.
Between symbolism, the dream world, and the real world, they highlight the effects that the great wave of Italian migration has left on the South, their homeland, but also on the North, the place to which they moved, through the dual perspective of those who left, without ever leaving.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES
"Southern Wind" is a reflection on the phenomenon of the great internal migration in Italy that took place between the XNUMXs and XNUMXs. In those years, trains loaded with human beings departed from the rural South to reach the industrial and mechanical North. Men, women, and entire families set out in search of a closer "America." My family also took part in the exodus on those same trains, tearing itself apart.
Calabria and Piedmont: two regions separated by over 1.000 kilometers of Italy. Despite my attachment to them, I can't fully connect with them.
I am both a witness and an involuntary product of this historical transition that radically ties me to these two territories, so distant and different. The need for clarity drives me to delve deeper into this phenomenon, to analyze the places where I grew up and how they have transformed and evolved.
"Southern Wind" is a journey into Italy's geographical and cultural memory.
Like a hall of mirrors, the vision of a semi-depopulated Calabria is reflected in the open wounds left by Turin's large abandoned factories.
The micro-history of Tullio and his family provides the starting point for a broad and profound reflection on the world of work, on the role that industry and trade unions have played in Turin and in Italy, and on the effects of the great internal migration at both ends of the country, from the perspective of the migrant and his dual identity.
Bio Filmography director
