在这部家在利比亚纪录片片中,The director’s great-grandfather emigrated from Sicily to Tripoli in the 1930s, in the midst of the colonial war waged by Italy against Libya, and decided to stay. Martina Melilli paints the picture of a distant city from conversations with her grandfather in Padua, photos, street sketches improvised coram publico, Polaroid pictures and memories. Since the filmmaker does not get a visa for Libya she asks young Mahmoud to be her eye in Tripoli. From the chats between the two arises a complex image of the chequered and sometimes violent relations between Italy and Libya, but also a new view of their lives. The search for the right door, the balcony that fits her grandparents’ memories, the empty plots where cinemas used to do business in Tripoli, are set against the present: stagnation in Libya, death in the Mediterranean, communication via Internet: “I want to get as close as I can,” a superimposed handwritten note claims. The closeness is achieved: on circuitous paths, images, writings, communicated and authentic in this communicatedness.