In ‘La montagna è finita’, Brussels-based Italian theater maker Edoardo Ripani returns to his birthplace in the Italian mountains.
Between August 2016 and January 2017, three strong earthquakes along the Apennines changed the landscape. The seismic activity was the last and most dramatic event for the region in a period of depression since the end of World War II. The area has become one of the "forgotten places" in Italy and Europe. The feeling of abandonment and anger became intertwined and fueled each other. But this situation is far from unique. In recent decades, areas across Europe have been marginalized by natural disasters and a faltering infrastructure recovery, depopulation, economic crises: the toll of globalization.
"My journey begins in 2016: while the earth shook in my birth region, my father was struck by lung cancer. The tumor was discovered on January 5, 2017; on June 1 of that same year, he passed away. My father died alongside his beloved mountains. 'La montagna è finita' becomes a journey through places that tell stories about the inhabitants. Through that personal and local focus, I address all Europeans, with a universal story of human and social impoverishment, against the economic and bureaucratic machinery.”
