The City in Contemporary Italian Documentary (2010-2020)

This essay surveys the representation of urban space in contemporary Italian documentary film by exploring certain recurring themes such as multiculturalism and the outskirts of cities, along with the relation between art cities and mass tourism. An analysis of recent films brings out certain aesthetic and thematic constants which tend to leave unseen various central connections, such as the integration of the filmmaker him- or herself into urban space and the space experienced directly by them, with a few rare exceptions which will be examined here. In this essay, the author will discuss a few examples of creative documentaries made over the past decade and highlight texts which distance themselves from the "observational" mode of documentary, in Bill Nichols' description, which tends to dominate Italian documentary cinema.