Why Me?

How many times sitting in the audience of a pitching session, have I seen fellow filmmakers facing a panel of experienced I’ve-seen-it-all commissioning editors and breaking into a sweat when that  obvious yet always unexpected question comes up: “Why are YOU the right person to make THIS film?”

When the time comes I will not hesitate I know why I’m the right person to make this film: Babel’s Market is about immigration and integration, about identity and the struggle to find one’s place in a foreign land without sacrificing one’s Self.

I am the son of immigrants.

I grew up in Turin (the setting for Babel’s Market) trying to figure out if I was Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Jewish, American, British or what… These doubts followed me around for a long time and to this day my voice trembles when I tell an Irish man that I’m Irish too just in case he replies “You must be joking!”

As if my own identity crisis was not enough I decided to move to Scotland, marry a Hungarian and give my daughter an even harder task when it comes to answering the simple question: “Where are you from?”.

I was lucky enough to belong to a middle-class, white, European-looking family but what about Porta Palazzo, this modern day Babel? The schools in the area have a 95% non-Italian demographic. These children often translate work permit applications for their parents, they speak Italian perfectly but don’t look it and they are cought between their culture at home, the culture at school and the cocktail of cultures surrounding them in Porta Palazzo.

This is why I’m fascinated with places like Porta Palazzo, I feel that if I look hard enough at how others deal with these split identities maybe I’ll get closer to answering my own questions: Where am I really from? And even more importantly… does it really matter?