EMANUELE GEROSA | DOCUMENTARY FILM DIRECTOR

BAMBINI DI FRONTIERA (BORDER CHILDREN)

 

a film by Emanuele Gerosa

 

Documentary // Running Time: 54 min. // Year: 2024 // Country of Production: Italy // Shooting Place: Italy, Germany, Switzerland // Original language: Italian

 

Logline

Between 1957 and 1996, thousands of families from southern Italy who emigrated to Germany had to leave their children at the A. De Gasperi Institute on Monte Bondone. This is the story of the boys and girls who spent their childhood in this Border Institute.

 

Synopsis

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, numerous families from southern Italy emigrated to Germany for work and fortune. Due to the lack of social integration policies for immigrant families, parents were forced to leave and have their children educated in Italy, often also moved by the profound hope of returning home soon. And so entire generations of children grew up in what were called border orphanages. One of these was the Alcide De Gasperi Institute in Monte Bondone which from 1957, when it was founded by the Capuchin friar Eusebio Iori, until 1996, welcomed hundreds of boys and girls every year. Bambini di Frontiera reconstructs, through the protagonists' testimonies, the Institute's history and of these children of emigrants. Although that experience is distant in time, the memory of those years has never faded and still today indelibly marks the lives of those border orphans.

 

Credits

Productions: Oneworld DocuMakers, Jump Cut

Associate Productions: Docenti Senza Frontiere (ODV), Fondazione Cassa Rurale di Trento, Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino

Writers: Emanuele Gerosa, Valentina Toldo

Director: Emanuele Gerosa

Producer: Chiara Nicoletti, Sebastiano Luca Insinga

Director of Photography: Simone Cargnoni

Editor: Michele Stocco

Music: Juan Moretti

Assistant Director of Photography: Matteo Bruseghini

Research and Development: Daisy Fellin

 

Festivals and Awards

Winner of the award "Cinema AMoRe" at 72º Trento Film Festival (26 April - 05 May 2024 - Italy)