 lamerica is a 1994 drama film directed by gianni amelio. it entered the competition at the 51st venice international film festival, in which amelio won the golden osella for best director.edoardo pittalis, roberto pugliese, bella di notte, august 1996. ==plot== gino (played by enrico lo verso) and fiore (michele placido) are italian racketeers who come to albania just after the fall of communism to set up a fictive firm and pocket the grants. they need a stooge and choose spiro tozaj/michele tallarico (carmelo di mazzarelli), an old man in a prison, who turns out to be an italian veteran from world war ii. easily confused and utterly impoverished, this elderly former political prisoner seems the perfect choice, until he unexpectedly disappears. gino is assigned to find him, setting out on a journey that leads him to discover spiro's tragic personal history and become intimately acquainted with the full extent of albanian poverty. gino's car tires are stolen, while the fancy shoes he gave spiro are also stolen by children. gino and spiro follow a group of albanians who are headed for italy in search for a better life, first by truck and later by ship. the albanian exodus parallels that of italians for the united states, which is where spiro believes that they are heading. ==awards== *1994 european film awards â "best film" *1994 venice film festival â 4 awards including "best director" *1995 sÃ£o paulo international film festival â "critics award" *1995 david di donatello: best cinematography, best score, best sound *1995 nastro d'argento: best director, best cinematography *1996 goya awards â best european film ==critical and scholarly reception== in the film, spiro toiza rediscovers his italian identity of michele and at the end of the film believes the boat is headed to new york, while on the other hand gino loses all materialistic indications that he's italian and comes to look like another albanian in a boat full of them. these two plot threads "challenge italy's colonial past and in so doing force the redefinition of the notion of identity. who is italian? and what does it mean to be italian?"luca caminati, "the return of history: gianni amelio's lamerica, memory, and national identity&quo
1990s_drama_films 1994_films Albanian-language_films Cinema_of_Albania Films_about_immigration Films_directed_by_Gianni_Amelio Italian-language_films Italian_films