Crossings Film Series

Over 2017-18, the CLRC and the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics is proud to present “Crossings,” a quarterly film series about migration and the Mediterranean. We open with the 2014 documentary, “Io sto con la sposa,” winner of the Human Rights Nights Award at the Venice International Film Festival. All films are subtitled and screenings are free and open to the public.

Io sono Li (Shun Li & the Poet, 2013)

Two outsiders become unlikely friends in this drama from filmmaker Andrea Segre. Shun Li (Zhao Tao) is a thirtysomething single mother from China who has come to Italy in the hope of providing a better life for herself and her son. However, Shun Li has partnered with an unscrupulous employment agency that shifts her from job to job and makes it difficult for her to pay her fees so she can make enough money to bring her son to Italy. She works as a barmaid in a shabby waterfront tavern in the fishing village of Chioggia; there, she meets Bepi (Rade Serbedzija), an exile from Eastern Europe who has a fondness for poetry and pens doggerel verse himself. Shun Li shares with Bepi stories of Qu Yuan, China’s most celebrated poet, and the two strike up a friendship that has the potential to become something more. However, the Chioggia natives make it clear that they don’t approve of Shun Li and Bepi’s budding relationship, especially given their suspicions about her Chinese heritage.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics