An Italian Youth

UNE JEUNESSE ITALIENNE

Belgium, France, Italy, 2022, 85'

Sokuro has just celebrated his 25th birthday. He emigrated from Burkina Faso fifteen years earlier and lives in a northern Italy town with his father and his little brother Nassir. Sokuro decides to visit his mother, who still lives in their native village; he then marries young Guienne, and thus restores a bond with his own origins. However, right after the wedding, Sokuro is obliged to come back to Italy to keep his job. While his wife waits for the money and documents to be in order to join him in the “pays des blancs,” he goes back to his work and family routine. Sokuro lives as a foreigner in a land that has seen him grow up. It is the beginning of  a tormented long-distance relationship in which the lives of the young husband and wife are torn between the hopes of immigration and the contradictions of rural traditions. 

Few films have managed to capture from the inside the feeling of uprooting of the migrants’ young generations as Une jeunesse italienne did. Mathieu Volpe reverses the point of view on the expectations of young people in search of their place in the world, outlining a surprising generational portrait by way of a profound narrative instinct and an accomplished sense of the mise-en-scène.