"Made in Italy" (film ... but also disco)

Although he never denied having had an "imprinting" son of that political ideology that dominated his Emilia for half a century, Luciano Ligabue has always distinguished himself from all those other artists who, in the pay of a certain flag, made him propaganda at the "Feste dell'Unità" gathering tens of thousands of people there to become voters.

The "Liga" has never proposed Garibaldian themes (populist and explicitly politicized) with refrains like "bomb or bomb" we will arrive in Rome ", but it has always limited itself to describe in an introspective and individual way the life of ordinary people, belonging to anonymous villages dispersed in the mediopadan fog. To put it simply, the Liga describes the life of the worker bees who build the beehive, or if you prefer (I hope not from the food point of view, given the new fashion to which we want to bring) ant anticheans.

A reality made up of honest workers who make sacrifices, who have dreams destined to remain such and which are sometimes opposed by a life that does not pay them for the aforementioned sacrifices, nor for honesty, never before for the commitment . On the contrary, sometimes it rages in a free and severe way.

Ligabue has therefore always limited itself to describing the existence of those people who know how to transfer, in what they produce, a living soul that is the secret ingredient of the "Made in Italy" appreciated in the world.

Unlike other authors, Luciano never leads you to the conclusion that if you marry a political ideology you will find the solution to your problems and a successful future. In this film, the message that passes, is that you are always and only you the architect of your life, even when society no longer gives you any hope or possibility. You must know how to create your ideal habitat with the means at your disposal, making yourself stronger than yourself, with your values ​​and abilities, feeding you energy from within your individual existence (made of feelings and small concrete things silently present in our daily).

Other authors lead to the conclusion that, despite the appearance, there are reasons for hope in society. In "Made in Italy" it does not even mention it. Indeed, with regard to the "environment" that hosts the life of the protagonists there is no lack of heavy "stock" and references to the state in which we are reduced. But you have to be very careful about the details, to know how to capture and appreciate this film. For example, a newscast that is the background to a conversation, in which the reporter reports that corruption in Italy is second only to Bulgaria. Or a large industry reduced to a ruin that is the location for a fun wedding. Or still a journalist who tries to pass a very specific message. But we stop here to not take away the taste of seeing the film.

For those who had already listened to the record or the story of "Riko", its protagonist explained by the same author in various interviews in which even the state television gave ample space even in the early evening, there is the surprise of finding a film that does not follow the same plot of the homonymous disc, which at this point becomes a minimal soundtrack.

For those who have previously seen Luciano Ligabue's other films, "Made in Italy" becomes complementary to "Niente paura", even if it is a "real" film with an artistically evolved storyline. "No fear" was in fact a "docufilm" made by reading the articles of the first part of the Italian Constitution that combined with testimonies and opinions of well-known people brought to the fore the socio-political dimension of our Constitution and meditated on the transformation of values ​​linked to identity of our country.

Considering that "Made in Italy" has committed its author since the summer of 2016, sorry that this commitment has not allowed to be anticipated by a review "No fear" just when our country has risked to see just misleading that magnificent card constitutional.

But even this is part of the style of this artist, who despite being able to obtain incredible numbers of sharing, never sets himself up as a preacher. Not even with this film that comes on the eve of another major call to the polls.

Andrea Troncone