by Samuele Grassi
In this paper I examine presences-absences and dis-allowed mobilities in neoliberal Italy through a comparative reading of two apparently unrelated films: Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name (2018) and Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare (Fire At Sea, 2016). My comparative approach is informed by new materialist feminist critiques, drawing primarily from queer feminist, post-colonial, and de-colonial thinkers whose work aims to dismantle the naturalisation of differences to make new worlds and unmake existing ones. I will address the (pre)determined narratives of class, gender, sexuality, and race, which are articulated in both works, and relate them to neo-imperialist practices at home and abroad. The paper focuses on the cinematic representations of (im)mobile futures for the two films’ protagonists – Elio (in Call Me by Your Name) and Samuele (in Fuocoammare) – to address the neoliberal government policies and biopolitical practices of tourism and enforced migration that (re)make Italy today.