Vesna Run Faster! Eastern European Actresses and Contemporary Italian Cinema

Aim of this contribution is to relate contemporary migration processes to their representation in Italian film and television, and one particular figure, the young Eastern European female beauty, offers a cue to answer. Considering Italian film and television fiction from the 1990's onwards, the authors on the one hand identify the main narrative structures that characterize the considerable number of productions with a female protagonist of Eastern European origin, in search of a unstable balance between traditional stereotypes and modern gender roles. On the other hand, they analyse the careers of some of the many young Eastern European actresses working in Italian cinema and television, and the related politics of casting. Consequently, the essay will on the one hand reveal the ambiguous attitude of the Italian public opinion toward migratory phenomena, and on the other hand testify the exclusion of Italian audiovisual production from some major trends in Europe.