
Retrospective

Arbëria
Arbëria
Francesca Olivieri
80' /
Italy
/ 2019
Set in an Arbëreshë community in southern Italy, the film follows Aida Greco, a seamstress who left her native village to build a life elsewhere, far from a cultural heritage she had long experienced as a wound. Her return to the village after her father’s death brings her face-to-face with her brother Ascanio and her niece Lucia—a young woman proud of her origins—reigniting an intimate struggle between distance and belonging, repression and transmission. Through these family ties, Arbëria explores the persistence of a minority language, shared rituals and memories, and the way in which a collective identity continues to redefine itself as it passes from one generation to the next.