Make italian cinema great again

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Let’s get this straight: cinema is not an Art. Not better, not worse. Just different—in the Latin sense of the word. It diverges from Art, though it remains genetically bound to it.

In Europe, we pretend cinema is entirely synonymous with its First Parent, Art, while nobody gives a damn about that poor outcast of a Second Parent, Industry. Yes, I’m capitalizing both. Because if we look at cinema as the child of Art and Industry, we realize it borrows from both and becomes something else entirely—a unique individual, with its own identity.

This familial metaphor helps us distinguish cinema from other expressive forms floating between art and entertainment. Music, painting, sculpture, literature—they are all arts. And they all need an industrial framework to reach the public. In the last two centuries, Industry has provided this. But that’s a post-production affair: the product remains the art itself. “The Persistence of Memory” would still be art even if the MoMA never bought it.

Cinema, on the other hand, was never separate from its industrial nature. It was never “commodified,” because it was never un-commodified to begin with. That’s the point. It is both Art and Commodity. Just like a child isn’t either parent, yet is both.

In the U.S., big capitalists figured this out fast. They built an entire ecosystem we now call the Classical Hollywood System: vertically integrated, with studios handling everything from development to distribution. A set of formal, narrative, and expressive rules; a polished Star System. Efficient. Profitable. Repeatable.

Simultaneously, others tried hard to link cinema to the arts. Soviet avant-gardes with Eisenstein adapting Marx’s “Capital” into montage. French impressionists aiming to remove all reference to reality in search of pure image, like music. German expressionists, mostly Jewish, who fled Hitler and fused with the Hollywood model to give birth to noir.

Italy, in the silent era, did well. We produced, exported, and were appreciated.

Then came Fascism. Like all socialist regimes, it danced a love-hate tango with capitalism. Mussolini wanted a State-run Hollywood. He got it. Cinecittà was founded in 1937. LUCE had been active since 1924. We produced easy-going Sunday-mass-and-municipal-theatre films. Italy, even under the macho gloss of Fascism, remained what it always was: parochial and cozy.

After WWII, marketing changed. State control remained. We borrowed the Nouvelle Vague and Cahiers du Cinéma narrative: defending the Seventh Art from capitalist abuse. Fair. Italy was barely industrialized, just beginning to be truly literate. Culture was tied to antifascism, antifascism to radical progressivism. There was a market for auteur cinema.

In 2023, the Ministry of Culture allocated 259 million euros to Italian cinema, over 200 million of which went to national films, with direct public funding covering over 40% of their production costs. More than 80% of Italian films receive state contributions. Public funding isn’t a support tool—it’s the end goal of the industry.

We hit peak radical-chic. Being seen reading Dostoevsky with one leg crossed in an armchair became aesthetic currency, while “Das Kapital” gathered dust on the shelf, fulfilling its sole function as bourgeois home decor. The public wantedauteur films, even if they bored themselves to death. They wanted to tell themselves they had reflected. They needed fuel for theoretical discussions about proletarian revolution from a luxury flat in Parioli.

It was a great moment for cinema, globally: Fellini, Antonioni, Kubrick. Films balanced between depth and profit. But that balance is gone. Not because the talent disappeared, but because the public did.

Then came the ’80s. Civic engagement gave way to self-indulgence. Blockbusters revived the original Hollywood model. Art and market began to diverge. Today, they live on separate tracks: one aiming for contemplative museum pieces, the other chasing maximum simplicity.

The problem with public funding in Italy is its desire to preserve this bipolar system. To defend it. To protect its vested interests

Experimental risk and entrepreneurship often clash—granted. And on principle, public support for innovation makes sense. But cinema without market ambition simply doesn’t work. Commercial appeal isn’t detachable. It’s a built-in function.

Commercial intent forces the artist to communicate. It demands that you connect. No one needs a form of beauty only its author understands. For a while, Italy understood this well. From the disaster of Neorealism—dreary, shapeless, unbearable—we rose to Commedia all’Italiana: sharp, profound, and funny. Same depth, different approach. Neorealism saw itself as pearls before swine; Commedia used entertainment as a Trojan Horse for critical reflection.

But Italian progressive culture never forgave that accessibility. Easy = stupid. Mass = fascist. And so, the enlightened minority barricaded itself in its own superiority, wondering aloud why the rest of the country was so backward.

And if public money truly went into experimental films no one would otherwise fund—films that advance expressive language or address uncomfortable truths—we’d still have a case. But it doesn’t. The entire ecosystem is rigged to sustain itself. Companies pop up solely to access funds for one film, then vanish. The business is acquiring public money. Not profit. Not art. Not prestige. Just access.

Look at the actual funded films. There’s no expressive boldness. Just hostility to the market. And how is this hostility conveyed? Through heavy themes: alienation, dysfunction, poverty, terrorism. With flat storytelling, bland direction, no formal insight. A heavy payload is enough. That’s cultural value now.

Then there’s the fetish for formal experimentation. Random sketches instead of coherent plots. Rollercoaster camera work. Long takes for no reason. Vintage filters. That’s art? Please.

Then along comes C’è Ancora Domani, and boom: record box office. Which means people watched it. Which means they reflected. That’s cultural impact.

If this is what “Culturally Relevant Cinema” means, we can ditch it—or rename it “Clientelist Cinema.” According to Treccani, culture is “the set of social, political, and economic institutions, artistic activities, and spiritual manifestations that characterize the life of a given society at a given time.” It’s not a gallery of elitist, unwatchable niche content. Culture is Alberto Sordi. Checco Zalone. Cristian De Sica. Like it or not.

The only thing the current system protects is the career of a self-replicating elite of directors, producers, and actors. The public pays for films that don’t recover costs, don’t move audiences, and don’t last.

A perfect example: Francis Kaufmann, an American director who received €863,000 in tax credits for a film that was never made, later arrested in Greece under serious criminal charges. In response, on July 5th, 2025, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared:

“It’s time to turn the page: no more waste, anomalies, or irregularities. In recent years, entire films have been funded with millions of taxpayer euros, generating almost no revenue.” (ANSA)

Yes. Damn right.

MAKE ITALIAN CINEMA GREAT AGAIN.

We must dismantle this closed system, its oligarchy, and the radical-elitist aberration that props it up. We must put the audience back at the center. The market. The risk. The money.

Not because we’re evil capitalists. But because that’s the only honest bond cinema should have with the real world: its public.