The Home Front – A Journey in Italy with Domenico Quirico

Human technology has made great leaps forward in recent decades, but what about humanity itself? Post-industrialization is causing distressing social changes, and Home Front: A Journey in Italy with Domenico Quirico shows what that means in practice.

Filmmaker Paola Piacenza accompanies journalist Domenico Quirico to various Italian cities in his search for the root causes of modern poverty. A homeless man talks about the cocktail of medications he gets to alleviate his pain. Teachers working with a troublesome class spend more time managing the kids than teaching them. Itinerants and asylum seekers depend on organizations such as food banks and the Red Cross.

In the illuminating closing conversation, sociologist Marco Revelli relates this need for help to the social failures of the business world—because even with a job you can still be poor. Revelli and Quirico sit together in the gaping void of a factory site that once provided employment and income for an entire city. It’s a painful and bitter symbol for the times in which we live.