It is never easy to portray poverty and exclusion, but Lina Wertmüller successfully did so in her 1992 film "Io speriamo che me la cavo", starring Paolo Villaggio. The title was presented to Croatian audiences as part of the third stage of Italia Experience in Šibenik, the Giffoni project co-financed by the Italian Ministry of Culture - Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual.
The feature film is an adaptation of the book of the same name written by elementary school teacher Marcello D'Orta, which gathers sixty essays by children from a small town in the Neapolitan hinterland and recounts through their eyes the degraded reality that surrounds them. These essays are thus used to tell the stories of the students of class III B of the Edmondo De Amicis elementary school.
Marco Tullio Sperelli, a Ligurian teacher played by Paolo Villaggio, is sent by the Ministry to a school in Corzano, near Naples, instead of Corsano, in his native Liguria. As soon as he arrives, he finds himself in a harsh environment, where the government seems non-existent and decay reigns unchallenged. Instead of going to school, children are working to help their families, who are in dire economic straits. The principal doesn't really work in order to assist her husband in politics, and the janitor, who is connected to the Camorra, is in charge of everything and asks for money even for toilet paper. The teacher, despite having immediately applied for a transfer, cares deeply about the children’s education and does his utmost to bring them back to school from day one, even picking them up one by one from their places of work.
Therefore, the film is a genuine insight into a tough environment as seen through the eyes of children, a place where, despite corruption, the Camorra, the absence of state authority and many contradictions and hardships, values like honesty and dignity continue to be of utmost importance.
In addition to that, Alessandro Valenti's film “Oltre il confine”, which brings to the silver screen the Italian dream of two African children, and Mario Vitale's “L'afide e la formica”, which portrays the story of a professor and a Muslim teenage girl who are brought together by a running race in the Calabria region, were also roundly applauded.
In the meantime, the filming of "Niko and the young people of Šibenik" continues: around twenty giffoners, recruited from Šibenik's secondary schools and coordinated by the Giffoni production department, are shooting the final scenes of the short film devised to showcase the natural beauty of the area and local talent. It will be focused on the relationship between the young people of Šibenik and their town.
