Join us for a screening of Va' Pensiero: Storie ambulanti (Walking Stories) (2013), followed by a conversation and Q&A with Ethiopian-Italian filmmaker Dagmawi Yimer.

A leading voice in migrant cinema in Italy, Yimer is also a co-founder of the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti, a collective project dedicated to documenting migration from the perspectives of migrants and preserving their stories as part of Italy's contemporary cultural memory.

Va' Pensiero follows the lives of Senegalese street vendors in Italy while examining anti-Black racism, migration, labor, and everyday forms of exclusion. Beginning with the aftermath of the 2011 racist attack in Florence that killed two Senegalese men, the film explores how migrant communities negotiate belonging within contemporary Italian society. Through multilingual testimony—including Italian, Wolof, and French—and observational documentary practice, Va' Pensiero challenges conventional narratives of migration by foregrounding the voices and lived experiences of migrants themselves.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with Yimer about the making of Va' Pensiero, documentary filmmaking as a form of witnessing and political storytelling, and the representation of migration and Black life in contemporary Italy.

The event is part of “Migration, Memory, and the Politics of Witnessing: A Residency with Filmmaker Dagmawi Yimer,” October 7–9, 2026. For more information please write to [email protected] and [email protected].