Di Là

Documentary

SYNOPSIS

The subject of the movie is Erminando’s story, professional photographer and professor at the Fashion Academy in Milan. Erminando grew up in Brescia, Northern Italy, but he is Albanian. He migrated to Italy with his mother in 1993. After more than 20 years, Erminando decides to have a journey back to Albania. Once there, lost memories and feelings come back to him, and, after decades, he remembers that night of a cold November when his mother bravely decided to change the course of their lives.
What would have happened to Erminando if he never took that boat? Luckily, the sea he crossed when he was a child only grabbed his fears, and his mother’s strength gave him new dreams, possibilities and future.
Travelling is a luxury only for those who own a passport, a good passport, with which they can move around the globe with little economic efforts. For other people, who do not own a certain passport or a visa, this luxury is a desperate need, and a risky one. Taking one decision or another might change completely a person’s life, or determine life and death.
Some of Erminando’s childhood friends, those who remained in Albania, remained there and they only know about ’The other side’ by watching TV or listening to the radio. Erminando, instead, lived this other side everyday for the last 20 years, and he believes that the possibility he had should be given to anyone in need, not only to the ones holding the ‘right’ passport.
‘Di Là’ means, in Italian, ‘beyond’. This word is also used by Albanian, referring to Italy, the country beyond the Adriatic sea. In the early 1990’s, Italy was reached by 27.000 Albanians in few months. They were fleeing from a country in deep economical crisis, after the fall of the Cold War.