No Dogs or Italians Allowed

The story of the Ughetto family, who left a mountain village in Piedmont at the beginning of the twentieth century to work in France. The men labour on tunnel and dam sites, the women stay in the village, the children grow up in between. Two wars and fascism land on the same family in turn. Alain Ughetto directed, and the family he tells is his own, a story built out of conversations with his grandmother. The film is made in stop motion. The figures are clay, the mountains coal and real soil; broccoli serves as trees and sugar as stone. The director's own hands enter the frame and talk to his grandmother. The title comes from signs actually hung in France at the time and states plainly how Italian migrants were received. The telling is not nostalgic; poverty, child death and the fear of deportation are all in plain view. It screened at the Annecy animation festival and won prizes in Europe. Who it is for: viewers who like handmade animation and the history of migration. Who it is not for: anyone after a children's film; the technique is childlike, the subject is not.