You know it's going to be hackneyed when the old fisherman who lives on an island and has a long white beard and looks like an actor who would be better off playing Lear than a down at heel, hard working Southern Italian fisherman with health issues gets a lead role. O.K. The plots. Yes. There are more than one. Plot one. Widow needs her son to get a better life away from fisher-folk. Plot two. One day granddad (long white beard) sees a sinking boat of migrants from Africa. For reasons that are not obvious he jumps in the water to rescue a drowning pregnant woman. She is an African. But not really. Just a lot of make up. Then tourists turn up. They have money. Plot three. Widow rents out her house and sleeps in the garage. African lady has baby. Plot four. Grandson is angry. He wants to stay but his mom wants him to have a better life. Like on the poverty stricken mainland. I am Italian, I know. Italy in the south is as bad as it gets. And so is the acting. Plot five. Hard nosed cops take the boat from granddad because he helped the Africans. I hung on for 20 minutes before throwing this rather smelly fish back in the sea.

Terraferma is without doubt the best film by the Sicilian director Crialese, whose earlier works include Respiro and Nuovomondo. It is a powerful, often disturbing and strongly emotional film (which some viewers and critics, mainly from the English-speaking world, seem to have difficulty with)that deals with one of the most urgent issues facing Italy, and Western Europe, the influx of desperately poor immigrants/refugees from Africa. The film is set on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, which in recent years has received so many of these people that their "centri di accoglienza" can barely accommodate them. The harsh Bossi-Fini law, and an agreement worked out between Berlusconi's and Khaddafi's government, resulted in many immigrants who'd made it to Italy via Libya being sent back to Libya, where many were horribly mistreated. The elderly fisherman Ernesto, who rescues at sea an African mother and her son, represents an older, humane ethos, a Christian ethic in the best sense and the code of seafarers that demands one never abandons anyone lost at sea. Strong performances all around from the professional actors, including the wonderful Donatella Finocchiaro, who has appeared in the films of the Palermo-based director Roberta Torre, and the casting of actual local fishermen (there's a marvelous scene where they plot to get back at the oppressive and heartless carabineri)imparts a vivid authenticity. Terraferma also is visually stunning; Crialese loves the Mediterranean and he imbues "the wine-dark sea" with both mystical and socio-political import, as its shores embrace various yet similar civilizations. A beautiful, engrossing film with heart, soul, humor, and a powerful humanistic vision.

All the characters in Emanuele Crialese's Terraferma are in search of the solid ground, for safety, for the certainty of tomorrow. And yet, nothing seems to be solid in their destinies. The story happens on a small island near the bigger island of Sicily, an area of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The local community sees its traditional economy based on fishing threatened, its mode of life based on honor and the rough justice of the sea threatened by everything around - decaying fishing crops, invading tourists, the dissolution of the moral fabric of the local society. And then an apparently bigger threat comes as desperate African boat immigrants start showing up at the shores, after having risked their lives in the stormy seas, flying in despair the devastated continent of their birth.I am not sure if the programming of this film together with the French 'Intouchables' was a coincidence. Both films deal with the problem of the African refugees seen as a symbol of the different people of different cultures trying to enter the Old Continent, same as repeated waves of immigration have stormed its gates all along the history. The same thing happens today in my country, and there are no easy responses, not on what concerns the clash of cultures and mentalities, not on the political or economic planes, and not on the human one. The shared message of the two films with their very different stories told in very different registers is that human beings can find their resources and show solidarity at moments of maximal crisis.Despite the story line which is a little too expected and simplistic 'Terraferma' succeeds to create emotion, with a few direct and well directed scenes. The story is a coming to age and an Italian family drama in the good Italian tradition to the same extent that it is an immigrant drama. The film is beautifully filmed, the director and the cameraman obviously love the sea and the landscape of the Mediterranean and make the best of these in a few sequences to remember. With good acting and a message that is fundamentally optimistic in its trust of the capacity of men staying human in the most adverse situations the rather anonymous 'Terraferma' did not fall much behind the 'Intouchables' which was one of the most successful films in the history of the French cinema.

A remarkable film from a group of busy Italian film makers whose output is largely unknown in the English speaking world, though the director's RESPIRO did get some sub-titled screening. This one deserves the Oscar it's been put up for.Hardships among Sicilian fishermen (oh oh) who become involved with I clandestini - illegal immigrants (Oh Oh!) but this one has a sharper edge than the do gooder-films that usually make their way into art theatres. The night time white water advancing on the small boat has genuine menace and the again admirable Finocchiaro turning on the black woman they saved, when pregnant and abandoned by her fellow escapees, is all the more effective because it's unfamiliar. The film is not without compassion but underlays it with a new realism.Cast, crisp camera-work, sunny scenes of ocean front life, the spectacle of half clothed tourist merry makers, whose relation with the locals is as dodgy as that of the Africans, all add to the impact of an involving and accomplished production.