Chapter 15 - Distopie all’italiana: Dystopian Depiction of the Souths of Italy through the Screens (Anna by N. Ammaniti and Mondocane by A. Celli, 2021)

This chapter looks at how contemporary Italian audiovisual productions, such as Niccolò Ammaniti’s mini-series Anna and Alessandro Celli’s film Mondocane, reinvent a dystopia “all’italiana”, based on different models and current con- cerns. These works depict bleak futures through post-apocalyptic tales set in southern Italy: Anna takes place in Sicily, where a deadly virus has wiped out the adults, leaving the children to survive on their own; Mondocane is set in Taranto, a polluted and abandoned city where orphaned children struggle to survive. Both works use the dystopian setting to criticize the excesses of modernity and draw attention to pressing environmental and societal issues, while establishing a link between reality and fiction. Ultimately, these dystopian tales serve as mirrors for society’s current crises and highlight the need for change, aimed at different communities of audiences.