Journey screening - short review - MY CLASS by Daniele Gaglianone

Gaglianone takes on an issue as difficult, particularly in Italy, as immigration by filming in a real classroom where immigrants learn English but with a fake teacher, one of contemporary Italian cinema’s greatest actors Valerio Mastrandrea. In My Class, the documentary intersects naturally within the artificial narrative structure, and as a result the film ends up becoming a most inventive and powerful exercise in docufiction. There are many laughs and many tears. One may be inclined to think that Gaglianone actually comes across as a winner only in selfish terms – the message the film carries is far too grand for the artistic vision he has in mind and sometimes he may comes across as slightly exploitational as well as self-apologetic in a particular sequence where he fails to help an African man get his work permit renewed. Yet, in knocking boundaries, he is quite successful in making a subject so difficult to understand suddenly universal and to show a helplessness and frustration that goes along with dealing with this particular subject. My Class is uncomfortable, perhaps even controversial, but the simple fact that it raises such an important issue makes it brave and ambitious. On a side note, considering the factor of the Italian language classroom, somehow remarkably manages not to restrict its audience in the international film and not much of the appeal of the film’s dialogue is lost in translation.