The immigrant voice: an analysis of Daniele Gaglianone’s film La mia classe

Abstract

Daniele Gaglianone’s film La mia classe can be inserted in the Italian film tradition of the so-called “migration films”, because it aligns with those who seek to represent the dramatic situation of those who need to reinvent themselves in foreign land. It is a work that points the camera to the clandestine world of immigration, letting it speak. The protagonists are all amateurs, not professionals and self-represent, except for Valerio Mastandrea, who plays the role of a teacher-volunteer of an Italian language class for immigrants.There are many topics in La mia classe dealing with the tragedy of the journey, the trauma of family separation, the loss of identity and the sense of non-be- longing common to contemporary diasporas. But the merit of the film is much more in its formal than thematic proposal. Its strength resides precisely in the hybrid zone between documentary and fiction: “docufiction” (NICHOLS, 2014), problematizing the levels of representation of the real (JAMESON), in a metacinematographic perspective, in which the cinema reflects on the scope and limitations of the art itself make movies.