Some people are born to be filmmakers, fewer to be good filmmakers, and a handful to be masters of cinema. At the end of Matteo Garrone's first feature «Terra di mezzo» I immediately ranked him among the third. I already knew about his talent since 2008 for «Gomorra», but I followed him and watched his old and new movies, and then in 2018 with the impressive «Dogma» there was no doubt.
From the beginning he showed maturity and style that made him ipso facto an "auteur". Nanni Moretti awarded his first short «Silhouette», Garrone made «Self Service» with the prize money, and both shorts became parts one and three of this film about the migrant working class in Europe, in the lowest paid and most unworthy jobs.
Perhaps the Bulgarian clairvoyant Baba Vanga foresaw the invasion of the northern hemisphere by people from the south (many of whom are, in fact, Muslims), which would bring about the fall of Europe. And she does not seem clueless. Those exploited peoples, whose original inhabitants were decimated, whose lands and resources were usurped, whose cultures were despised in the elaboration of an ethical code to live on Earth in harmony with nature, today perhaps --without realizing it-they are undermining the lands of the North and some kind of shock will come to pass, along with wars, natural disasters and climate change.
In this "land in between" (apparently the Italian peninsula, bathed by the Mediterranean) converge the young Nigerian prostitutes of the first segment «Silhouette», the Albanian mason boys of the second segment «Euglen & Gertian», and the old Egyptian who attends a gas station in «Self Service». The three segments recount a day in the life of these people. Garrone threaded fictional elements around the protagonists and made the prostitutes, the bricklayers and the gas station attendant play themselves. It is a proposal that, if not new, is magnificently achieved, so that you feel that you are watching three portraits of the life of the migrant, but at the same time you follow the central characters in the same way as watching a drama, since the film's script is structured as such.
The prostitutes are the most jovial and their case is not deepened more perhaps because we all know that prostitution is immemorial as time. The beautiful Afro-descendant women struggle with their clients, laugh, haggle, argue, fight, insult, but the morbid side of their profession is not shown in the tale, which is intrinsically violent. Beautiful feminine voices chant and accompany the working day of these women who fled from the misery of colonized Africa, only to fall into a not very encouraging panorama.
The middle segment is the softest, with a group of young males who assume their migrant drama with youthful spirit, perhaps with greater hopes and, as men, taking advantage of the undeserved privileges that society gives us simply by putting an M on each time we are asked what our sex is. However, it shows us the contractors, most in frank ignorance of the condition of their "workers", some kind, others completely clueless.
Finally, the segment of the old Egyptian Ahmed (called Amedeo in the "land in between") is the most moving: one, because the character is very charismatic; two, because he confronts the abuse of clients with a certain wisdom of an older adult; and three, because Garrone relies on fragments of some black and white footage of which no information is given, in which the younger Ahmed recounts his life.
In the end, «Terra di mezzo» flows like life, and while Ahmed, at the end of his night shift, arrives at dawn in his humble room and prepares to sleep, the African prostitutes and the Albanian masons without work permits take their arms on the highway, waiting to be "picked up" to earn their livelihood.
