Alterità e migrazione nel cinema: un'analisi antropologica di immaginari nell'Italia contemporanea

The article explores the use of cinema as a narrative and figurative tool, highlighting how some films can affect the collective imagination giving a different interpretation of well-known phenomena, such as migration from Africa to Italy. Through the analysis of Matteo Garrone’s Io, Capitano (2023) and Sophia Seymour’s Teranga - Life in the Waiting Room (2020) films, the authors reflect on their value as ethnographic texts, capable not only to express an incisive narrative power, but also to be analysed in a stratified and coherent manner according to real life issues. Io, Capitano is a very successful cinematic industry product that has won numerous international awards and recognitions, while Teranga, an experiment in independent cinema niche that is decidedly less well known, recounts the shattered dreams and hopes of some asylum seekers forced to confront the weaknesses and violence of the Italian reception system. Both films, although with different approaches, offer a layered and complex vision of the migration phenomenon in Italy, contributing new stimuli to the contemporary debate.