On this week’s episode of the Cineamerican Dream, your hosts Nicole Valencia and Kelly Shahu explore the complexities of Emanuele Crialese’s 2006 Italian Film Nuovomondo.
The film is set in the early twentieth century, during a period when millions of migrants passed through Ellis Island in New York. It follows the Mancuso family, peasants from rural Sicily who leave their village and travel to the United States in search of a prosperous land, filled with rivers of milk and gigantic vegetables, they are hoping will provide them with economic security and social mobility. Among the Italian immigrants is also an English woman, Lucy, who is more socially and educationally skilled than her Italian counterparts, according to American standards, yet is still deemed powerless due to her gender.
Throughout the podcast, your hosts analyze the relevance of this Italian family’s and Lucy’s immigrant story to Ellis Island through a historical and symbolic lens, revealing that this film places authority from American institutions and classification/exclusion at the center of the migrant experience, making viewers question: who could actually fit the perfect immigrant mold that America would deem worthy enough for entry? Crialese’s choice for the film to have an ambiguous ending also leaves room for your hosts to provide an interpreted meaning of the symbolism and full-circle moment that the final milk river scene provides.
