Dolce & Gabbana sells an image of Sicily with its heavenly beaches, crystal clear seas and picture-postcard landscapes but it never shows what’s bubbling away beneath the surface or lingering in the air. The city of Siracusa (or, to be precise, its surrounding region of Augusta Priolo Melilli Siracusa) is the epicentre of the “ecocide” (the directors’ term) explored by François Xavier Destros and Alfonso Pinto, a researcher in geography and visual cultures, in Toxicily, shown as part of Festival dei Popoli’s Italian competition. Here, picture-postcard Sicily gives way to toxic Sicily which most people prefer not to know about because it’s too scary.
The culprit behind this tragedy lived daily by the locals who have to live with it and give birth near it, as well as suffer from tumors and respiratory diseases caused by it is oil companies’ greed. Since 1949 the industrial outskirts of Augusta have hosted one of Europe’s largest petrochemical plants enormous factories and veritable villages (now abandoned) that once housed many workers employed there.
The wealth accumulated by sector leaders has been astronomical however, for those who worked their fingers to the bone having left agricultural employment behind only to become resigned but proud employees, they received just crumbs. And even sadder is when we think about the risks that these latter took or continue taking while being exposed day after day to highly toxic/carcinogenic chemical substances. “It’s better dying from cancer than hunger,” one phrase repeated over again throughout this film like a sorta mantra chanted kind ah thing every so often hereabouts sums up such compromise as they were forced into all too well.
These workers are resigned like sacrificial lambs destined to feed an ever more voracious and cruel form of globalization though some among them still resist this fate. The movie Toxicily was made for those few who do not accept their lot in life. Between those who accept it and those who rebel against it, there exists a region that finds itself poised between paradise and hell stunningly beautiful nature on one side sickening chemical stench on the other hand constantly talking back and forth between what you see & what you know (even if we’d rather not know).
The tragic tales told by people denouncing an unbearable situation like sitting next to shots showing cows grazing under almond trees they know to be poisoned strike a chord within us which resonates tragically and forces us think about how much “progress” really costs.
Toxicily is sobering but accurate and poetic in its own way too because it cuts straight through everything with surgical precision (that’s why I called this review sobering) to show us what is happening around health as well as the environment here. This is now an emergency that cannot be ignored any longer all the same no one seems concerned except for a few here or there who too often get drowned out by silence. Paradoxical yes wonderful yet terrifying these are the contradictory emotions evoked by the French-Italian duo’s portrayal of Sicily this place begs questions about our future if we don’t open up our eyes.
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