Angelo Boccato

Almost a month after the Italian Civil Aviation Authority (ENAC) suspended all flights between Italy and China on 31 January, the country has found itself at the epicentre of the European outbreak of the coronavirus.
The situation has temporarily halted tensions political tensions within the coalition government, but disputes are still breaking out across party lines, including within the far-right opposition led by Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, leaders of the League and Brothers of Ital...

By Angelo Boccato
During the Media Diversity Institute (MDI) and Silence Hate’s Media Camp in London in April 2018, I was reflecting on how the social, media and political debate tends to sink down to new horrifying depths when African migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are concerned.
While the whole debate is polluted by fake news and misconceptions, and fueled by the far-right agenda, when it comes to African migrants we would hear labels like “invasion”, “economic migrants” and the absu...

EARLY THIS MONTH, MATTEO SALVINI—the leader of Italy’s far-right, anti-migrant League party—was removed from his position as interior minister, when the government made a turn to the center. Since he’d started the job, last summer, Salvini had presided over a rise in harassment and violence against migrants, announcing from the start that “the good time for illegal immigrants is coming to an end.” He reached for more power, and then lost what he had, though his supporters—chanting “Elections! Elections!” in the chamber of parliament—suggest there could be more of him ahead. For the most part,

Da tre anni la Brexit è al centro della scena politica britannica e internazionale. La situazione è stata spesso paragonata a un tunnel nel quale si sono incagliate le trattative per l’uscita del paese dall’Unione europea. In questo stallo ci sono delle variabili di cui si tiene poco conto: la crescita della destra e dell’estrema destra britannica, e la loro influenza sul governo.
Lo United Kingdom independence party (Ukip) è una delle forze principali di questa partita. Tradizionalmente iden...

At first, it seemed like the 91st Academy Awards posed promising for diversity, particularly given its history of being called out for its overwhelming whiteness. Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Black Panther was nominated for several awards, as was Spike Lee’s BlackKKKlansmen, representing great leaps in recognition of African-American artists, actors and directors.
Two international films, Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War were also nominated for both Be...

Last month, Dutch pastor Derk Stegeman finally concluded a 97 day, 24-hour per day “mass marathon” at the Hague’s Bethel Church. The exceptionally long church service was a legal and clerical experiment to protect Hayarpi Tamrazyan, an Armenian refugee that has lived in the Netherlands for nine years. After being denied political asylum, she and her family were facing deportation.
Eventually, it was successful—at the end of January, Tamrazyan and ...

The return of Christian Masset, the French Ambassador in Italy on Friday 15 February has not been the end of Italian diplomatic crises.

European Parliament president Antonio Tajani and Italy’s deputy prime minister and minister of the interior, Matteo Salvini were accused by Slovenia of “historical revisionism” following last Sunday’s celebration in Basovizza, near the Slovenian border, during National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe. Croatia also protested following the two Italian poli...

Music collector Ollie (Rory Culkin) and his boisterous Russian friend/partner-in-crime Nikolai (Robert Sheehan) travel to the Ollie’s family estate in order to steal a valuable jazz record. Their plans go awry when Ollie’s estranged grandmother Charlie (Mary Beth Peil) unexpectedly arrives at the estate accompanied by her neighbour Marlena (Elizabeth P...

Sulla mia pelle, il film sugli ultimi sette giorni di vita di Stefano Cucchi diretto da Alessio Cremonini, viene proposto stasera dal Festival dei Diritti Umani di Milano, alle 20, al cinema Anteo (ingresso gratuito, prenotazione obbligatoria). E nell’occasione saranno presenti, tra gli altri, anche la sorella di Stefano, Ilaria Cucchi e l’avvocato Fabio Anselmo.
Il film è già uscito su Netflix, dopo esser stato presentato in anteprima lo scorso 29 agosto al Festival di Venezia, nella sezione...

The meeting between deputy prime minister and minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbàn for the launch of their anti-migration manifesto, has deep ramifications, on both a European and national scale.

The Salvini-Orbàn press conference in Milan last week revealed the pair’s desire to strengthen the borders of Fortress Europe, as the two party leaders congratulated each other on their respective “successes”.

The two then presented the rhetoric of an “antti-globalist and anti-elite” front against the globalist one.......

Directorial debut by iconic Black British actor deals with criminality in Jamaica, Windrush and a very groovy Hackney in the 1970s and 1980s - in cinemas Friday, August 31st.

It’s the first time that Idris Elba gets behind the camera. And it’s only natural that cinema-lovers are very curious to see what he makes of the eponymous novel by the Jamaica-born British writer Victor Headley, published by X Press in 1992. The Hackney-born actor-turned-director transports us to 1973 in Jamaica in order...

I was born to an Italian father and a Dominican mother in Santiago de Los Caballeros, and raised by my white Italian family in a village of 4,000 people in Northern Italy.
While I have not experienced racist attacks in my life so far, I have known racist verbal abuse. The mother of a childhood friend of mine once called me “dirty n****r”, after I inadvertently stepped on the flowers in her garden; I was 6 or 7 years old, and that shocked me.
And whenever I have been stopped by policemen or ca...

Would Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements have reached the same audience if they had not supported by the widespread use of hashtags on social media? Also, how important and significant is the online space provided by social media for marginalised groups?

The Pew Research Center published a report “Activism in the Social Media Age” claiming that “roughly half of black social media users say these platforms are personally important to them when it comes to expressing their ...