Screening and discussion of a documentary with Francesco Tomè

Colognole Farmers’ Cultural Association

Pontassieve (Italy)

May 30th, 2026

This is an initiative of La Leggera within the Creative Europe Tramontana IV project.

On May 30th, the documentary film “La Restanza: Mountain Stories Between Tuscany and Emilia” by Francesco Tomè (Italy, 2024, 54 minutes) is going to be screened in public. The filmmaker will be in attendance and will participate in a discussion with the audience afterwards.

The term “restanza” was coined by Calabrian anthropologist Vito Teti, who writes:

“Leaving and staying are the two poles of human history. The right to migrate corresponds to the right to stay, to build a new sense of belonging to a place and to oneself. Restanza means feeling rooted and yet disoriented in a place where one feels protected and yet radically rejuvenated.” […] “Restanza is a contemporary phenomenon concerning the need, the desire, and the will to create a new sense of belonging to a place. This is an era marked by migration, but it is also the quieter era of those who ‘stay’ in their place of origin and live it, traverse it, and interpret it, amid a ceaseless whirlwind of change. The pandemic, the climate emergency, and large-scale migration seem to be altering our relationship to the body, to space, to death, and to others, and they necessitate the creation of new communities, imposing new ways of life on those who leave and those who stay. Today, many narratives—often rhetorical and superficial—idealize life in small towns…”

This abandonment, with its brutality, erases the practices of remembrance and hope among those who chose or were forced to stay. “Restanza” is not limited to small villages, but also affects cities, metropolises, and suburbs. Embraced with all its contradictions, it is neither a choice of ease, nor passive waiting, nor apathy, nor a vocation to contemplate the end of places, but rather a dynamic and creative process—conflictual, yet potentially regenerative for both the inhabited place and those who remain there.

Francesco Tomè, the documentary’s director, explores this concept during a journey through the high plateaus between the Apuan Alps and the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, where some choose to stay or leave, defying abandonment out of love for the mountains. Amid slow rhythms, farm work, and a lack of services, the “restanza” becomes an act of silent and radical resistance. A raw, unvarnished narrative that gives a voice to those who have chosen life at high altitude as a common good worth defending.