Manodopera

The animation "No Dogs or Italians Allowed" is a work that beautifully and carefully portrays a personal and at the same time universal story. This animation, created by French director Alain Ogetto, explores his family history and Italian immigration to France in the early 20th century. Using stop-motion animation techniques and materials such as dough, dry leaves, cardboard and stones, Ogto has created a story that presents a picture of Europe's past as well as personal history.

This work, which was screened at the Annecy Animation Festival and won awards, has been able to establish a balance between tragedies and happy moments. The animation "No Dogs or Italians Allowed" is not only Ogetto's second feature-length animation after "Jasmine" which was shown in Annecy in 2013, but also as a work of art that, with its own aesthetics, combines small and large historical stories with Combines, is known.

In this animation, Ogto not only narrates his family history, but enters into a conversation with it. Through the dialogues he has with his grandmother, Cesare, he portrays the story of love and migration, poverty and struggle, as well as the experiences of different generations of a family. This animation, made in a creative and personal way, has been noticed not only as a work of art but also as a valuable historical document.

Combining poetry and realism, "No Dogs or Italians Allowed" presents small and large historical stories in an original and personal animated style. As an eyewitness account of Italian migration to France, this work is not only artistically but also historically important. This animation, made using everyday objects and puppet characters, provides viewers with a unique and different experience.

Finally, "No Dogs or Italians Allowed" is more than an animation; It is a love story, a historical journey and a work of art that reminds us that every person and every family has a story that deserves to be heard. This animation, with a positive and hopeful look, shows us how we can learn from the past and build a better future.

Not all great stories that make it to the cinema are starred by real actors. NO DOGS OR ITALIANS ALLOWED (2022), written and directed by Alain Ughetto, is an example of this. In addition to accumulating writing and directing, Alain Ughetto also constructs, with his own hands, the characters/family members, immortalizing, in the title, the discrimination to which Italians were subjected in a country that they helped to modernize.

It is a cinematographic work filmed in slow motion, which stands out for its personal and moving narrative, while taking, at the same time, an in-depth look at historical events that shaped the 20th century. The film is, as has often been said, a love letter from the director to his Italian ancestors (grandparents), Luigi and Cesira Ughetto, who faced the difficult journey of emigrating from the Piedmont region, in Italy, to France. A story of hunger, misery, wars and disease, occasionally interspersed with moments of hope and happiness.

One of the notable aspects of this film is the way in which it skillfully balances the story of the Ughetto family with the historical events that serve as a backdrop and give it a chronological order, in particular the Italo-Turkish war and the two world wars, connecting the Ughettos' personal experiences with the turmoil and significant changes that occurred in the world during this period. This approach gives the film a universal dimension and makes the family's story a microcosm of the struggles and challenges faced by humanity throughout time.

Among the animated figures, in some sequences, a human hand appears that dialogues with the narrator of the story, the grandmother, and which can symbolize both Luigi's talent and skill, and the importance of manual work, which is passed down from a generation to another, as well as the journey undertaken by Alain Ughetto's grandparents on the path to building a better life for their children and grandchildren.

Through using doll-animation, (very nice made dolls!) the true story of a family which has to go through a lot, comes very close. The storyteller present the story in a very nice, artistic way. The intermingled show of a bodypart of the real storyteller give some extra spices. I also learned quite a bit over history, how all what happend between late 19th cenutey and now to personal lives.

Some other opinions: To tell the story of a gift-hands-on skills and the courage to work the land to live and raise a family-inherited from an Italian grandfather from Piedmont... a slice of Italian history between the 19th and 20th centuries, who worked between Italy, Switzerland, and France with courage and determination to "make it" and support a family. A beautiful idea and a great poetic touch for creating clay characters, which take the viewer on a journey through the different stages of the grandfather's journey to establish his family in France and obtain naturalization, using a few well-chosen archival images. Moving. Sober.

Being one of the oldest techniques used in animation cinema, stop motion has been reborn, in recent decades, as a privileged vehicle for many authors (who doesn't remember Tim Burton's famous animations in the 90s), after a period of of relative oblivion.

The vintage effect seems to attract new authors, who complement it with digital techniques and artistic daring, such as mixing real and animated images, as an integral part of the narrative. Here, the director himself, through his voice and a hand, interferes in the story, like a true character.

Technique aside, the film is a tribute to the director's grandparents' generation, to the time of migrants, who fled from hunger, on their mountain villages, in search of work abroad. Where they endured, with a smile on their lips and recognized patriotism, the racist humiliations of their hosts, because you should not bite the hand that feeds you.

A work for future memory, of a time of misery, war and survival, which contrasts, so much, with the comfort and pride of subsequent generations.

As my grandmother used to say, they are all rich now!

This movie has a very unique style. It's a stop motion clay animation... but with human hands intervening in key parts and building the sets in real time ! And the hand belongs to the author and interacts and dialogues with his grandmother who is one of the clay characters. The result is deeply personal and very touching.

On a superficial level, it's a story of immigrants and their struggle with racism and integration, but that's actually only a minor point, the main one being the continuity of family while coping with displacement, extreme poverty, fascism...

The movie is given as PG-13 but my 9yo franco-italian (like in the movie!) enjoyed it.