At the end of the 50’s, in Africo, a small village in the valley of Aspromonte, a woman dies in childbirth, because the doctor can not be there on time, as no route connects Africo with the other villages. The inhabitants decide to get together to build it up. In the meantime, Giulia, the new teacher of the local school, is trying to teach Italian to the kids.
The film, Aspromonte, la terra degli ultimi (production IIF-Rai Cinema) directed by Mimmo Calopresti who has Calabrian roots, is based on Pietro Criaco’s novel Via dall’Aspromonte and tells the story of a battle for rights including health, education and freedom, in Africo, a small mountain village in the south of the region. The borgo of Africo, abandoned in the early 1950s following a flooding disaster, was largely recreated in Ferruzzano Superiore, another village almost completely abandoned, although there are images of the Church of Santa Maria dei Tridetti in Staiti in the circus scene and of Africo Vecchio from above. The cast includes Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (as a teacher from Northern Italy), the ‘poet’ Marcello Forte, Sergio Rubini, Francesco Colella and Marco Leonardi.
In his notes, the director explains: The South has always been both geographical location and a landscape of the soul. Heaven and hell, fairy-tale and real life. This film is similar. Africo is in Europe and it reminds us of what our country was like, just a century ago, but as a part of the South, it is closer in its dreams and defeats to places on the edges of the world. These places are still alive, still present, still desperately looking for a future, at the gateway to Europe.