Alì Ha Gli Occhi Azzurri from director Claudio Giovannesi has been getting a lot of attention, showing up at film festivals, even winning once in a while and for good reason. Italians, who are a good-hearted and charitable people, had not until recently experienced the waves of immigration that we Americans always have, and they are trying to figure out how to give and not be depleted in their effort to do the right thing.
Immigration is a big issue in today’s Italy that’s been reflected in literature and films, but Giovannesi has told a story even more complicated and with more layers. It’s a story that should be of interest even to Americans with our country almost entirely made of immigrants and yet never really wanting to accept or understand the ones that come after us. New immigrants face more than just finding acceptance and their place in a new world, they have also to figure out a way to integrate their customs and old life into the new one. Alì Ha Gli Occhi Azzurri does a good job of showing us the heartache and the collateral damage from raising a family in a new country.
The story centers around 16-year-old Egyptian-Italian Nader, whose parents were born in Egypt but he in Italy. I teach ESL to new Americans, and I see, every day, the challenge of immigrants trying to adapt to a new country’s ways while retaining their religions and their cultures. Many of them picture their children obediently following suit, but it doesn’ always happen that way.
It didn’t happen that way for Nader’s family in Italy. Teenagers rebel, and Nader’s rebellion is in the form of a pretty young Italian girlfriend. “I love her”, he tells his family when they say that he’s got to stop seeing her. For them, it’s just a teenage infatuation and out of the question. And though Nader and his girlfriend may be a modern version of Romeo and Juliet, Nader’s story hints at what might have become of Romeo and Juliet if they had continued their relationship. Would Romeo and Juliet really have left their families and never looked back?
“We’re muslim. We have different ways from the Italians. Mostly religion”, says Nader’s mother and when she locks him out of the house one night when he gets home after midnight and he vows never to return as long as she won’t accept his girlfriend. “I’ll teach her a lesson”, Nader says of his mother, but he doesn’t realize that this is a lesson that can not be taught. His mother will not give up her convictions, even for her son.
English speakers be warned: this PAL zone 2 DVD came without any subtitles, not even Italian ones, and it was a chore for me to understand every word. But the visual imagery of the poor multi-cultural Ostian neighborhood in the grey of winter and the camera, that follows Nader’s point of view and lets us see things through his eyes do a lot of the talking.
Director: Claudio Giovannesi
Writers: Francesco Apice (story), Claudio Giovannesi,
Stars: Nader Sarhan, Stefano Rabatti, Brigitte Apruzzesi
2012 – 94 minutes
I Love Italian Everything 