ALIENS is a story of territories, to conquer or to inhabit, to understand and make one’s own. It is a reflection on freedom and domination, acceptance and rejection. It is a dialogue between a mother and her daughter, one dark-haired with dark eyes, Italian by birth, and the other pale with green eyes, daughter of a Northern Irish father, born in Belfast. Because genetics are not like water, they run deep and set traps for those who would play with stereotypes, for those who prefer to divide and simplify rather than unite and explore the complexity of life. When you leave, you no longer belong to any place, or at least you will never again belong to just one place. And your descendants will be « mixed in life, » capable of belonging to many things all at once. For some, it is wealth; for others, it is fear, rejection.

 

In a world where borders are becoming increasingly aggressive, where the hunt for aliens – of race, gender, and ideology – increasingly resembles the witch hunts of the Middle Ages… two little witches armed with a recorder, paper, pen, and a video camera will embark on a coast-to-coast journey from Northern Ireland to Sicily to dip their feet in two distant seas and let them communicate freely with each other.

 

One morning during the war on the coasts of Northern Ireland, the ocean washed hundreds of Italian bodies onto the beaches of Donegal. They were all men. The women came to identify the corpses. At least the fortunate ones who found a body. For the others, there remained only the noise of the waves and the strong wind. It is a forgotten story, about which little or nothing is known in Italy. I asked my daughter, who was born in those parts 24 years ago, to do some archaeology work with me. Because in some way it is also our story, that of our family, intimately linked to a heritage we did not know we carried within us. 

 

And our search is anchored in the present, in an Italy struggling with identity, where fascist thought seems to be finding a new and dangerous momentum and from which young people continue to leave. The journey between Northern Ireland, where our compatriots were called « aliens, » and today’s Italy, on whose coasts other « aliens, » other bodies, arrive daily, must be undertaken « with two voices, » by two identities that complement each other. A physical and mental journey – from Belfast across the Italian boot to the coasts of Sicily – to question that fragile sense of « belonging » which for us, Alessandra the mother and Marta, the daughter, has always been a complicated balance to maintain.