Documentary
2025 Italy
14 minutes
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English
Director: Samuele Wurtz
with: Caterina Gulfo and Yahya Mahfoud
«The Cicadas» is realized by the students of a technical high school of a rural area in the north-west of Italy (Savona county). The film is about nature, pollution caused by chemical industries, immigration from north Africa and adolescence. The students wrote the script and were the camera operators of the film and the actors. In the last weeks the film got three awards at national youth film festivals.
The film is not explicitly about mental health but rather is about the way adolescents look at the environment and the community they’re living in, and the school which realized it has a strong relationship with a centre for young people (starting from 16 years old) which is active in the area (called Valle Bormida – > Bormida Valley) since 3 years (“Spazio Giovani Valbormida” -> “Valbormida Youth Space”). This centre is run in partnership by an NGO (Association «Noi per Voi») and the Mental Health Department and has close relationships with the schools of the area, the Centre for Employment, the Social Services and a couple of associations of young people which are very active in the field of culture, music, international exchanges to promote the wellness of the young people and the whole local community.
So we’ll present the film and the “Spazio Giovani Valbormida” as a small example of how a partnership between NGO and public services can operate in a rural area to take care of the mental health of the young people in a non-traditional way.