Valeria G. Castelli

Valeria G. Castelli received her PhD in Italian Studies from New York University in 2016, with a dissertation on the rhetoric, ethics, and politics of contemporary Italian documentary film. Her current project examines Italian documentary films made over the last ten years that deal with migrants’ journeys to Europe through the central Mediterranean route (the route that includes Lampedusa), as well as their precarious lives once in Italy. Given its geographic centrality over more than a decade and the high number of lives lost in the Mediterranean, Italy has been a very important observatory for migration analysts, and migration stories have attracted the attention of many documentary filmmakers. Her research project shows how documentary film has become a uniquely effective medium in Italy for challenging stereotypical accounts of migrants’ lives and journeys, and how the genre contributes to the cause of migrants’ rights. The communicative design of the documentaries analyzed in this project is conceived as a means for advocacy and social change. By modifying or reinventing specific representational and rhetorical strategies, these documentaries unmask enclaves of injustice, discrimination, and exploitation. In so doing, they not only bring these issues under ethical scrutiny, but they also help create political resistance, social awareness, popular indignation, and the possibility for social change.