Nearly 50 years later, Daniele Vicari retraces the journey the famous documentarist, Joris Ivens, took between 1959 and 1960 to film L'Italia non è un paese povero, a work commissioned by ENI president, Enrico Mattei.
From the industrial areas around Gela and Termini Imerese in Sicily to Porto Marghera facing the Venetian lagoon, Ivens' invaluable repertory material guides Vicari on his route up the peninsula, revealing again the enormous changes that have taken place. Ivens captured the first signs of modern industrialization and economic growth, Vicari the consequences thereof. Today, Italy's concerns center around deindustrialization, alternative energy sources, land reclaim, immigration from the Third World and the expansion of the Chinese market.
My Country is a broad fresco of interviews and bold images, like the testimony of the environmentalist Gianfranco Bettin or the meeting with a family from Basilicata, which had brought the RAI censors' wrath on Ivens.