Title: Ma Sei Nata in America

Year: 2022

Runtime: 27 minutes 55 seconds

Format: Short Documentary

Genre: Personal / Observational / Participatory Documentary

Location: Racine, Wisconsin, USA

Language: English / Italian

Starring: Sandra Venturini

Director: Zac Wichlei

Production: University College London (UCL)

Film Overview

Ma Sei Nata in America (But You Were Born in America) is a personal, observational and participatory documentary exploring Italian-American identity, migration, and longing through the filmmaker’s own family history.

Set in Racine, Wisconsin, the film centres on the filmmaker’s Nonna, Sandra Venturini, as she reflects on family, loss, and the life promised by the American Dream, a dream that never fully arrived.

Synopsis

Inspired by the Italian song Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano, Ma Sei Nata in America interrogates the tension between inherited identity and lived reality. Though the Venturini family maintains deep cultural ties to Italy, generations born in the United States occupy a liminal space neither entirely Italian nor wholly accepted as American.

The documentary unfolds through observation, archival material, and participatory conversation between the filmmaker and his Nonna. As the family reunites for the first time in a decade to celebrate Nonna’s 80th birthday, memories of migration, sacrifice, and loss resurface alongside contemporary anxieties surrounding American politics, immigration, and belonging.

Rather than celebrating assimilation, the film critiques the American Dream, examining what was lost in the journey toward it and what continues to be longed for.

Director’s Statement

Ma Sei Nata in America was inspired by loss and by the desire to understand what remains. After the passing of my paternal grandmother, I became acutely aware of how much of my family’s history existed only in memory. This film became an attempt to honour that history before it disappeared.

Through conversations with my Nonna, I sought to understand how my family became American, what was sacrificed in that process, and where we feel we belong now. Although three generations removed from immigration, my family continues to exist between identities considered American in Italy and Italian in America.

Influenced by the work of Alan Berliner, particularly Nobody’s Business and Intimate Stranger, the film blends observational, participatory, and archival approaches to explore ancestry, longing, and identity.

The film primarily adopts an observational style, incorporating participatory moments and archival materials to reflect the layered nature of memory and identity. Visual restraint allows character and dialogue to guide the narrative, while subtitles and captioning are used consistently to support accessibility for both audiences and family members with disabilities.

Sound remains largely diegetic, grounding the film in lived environments and everyday rhythms, resisting overt stylisation in favour of intimacy and authenticity.

At its core, this film is not only about my family’s past, but about my own desire to understand where I come from and what it means to inherit a dream that was never fulfilled.