Sabina Guzzanti

Spin Time, Sabina Guzzanti's new documentary about the have-nots in our society and their ongoing struggle for a roof over their head, is just the latest example of how the international film community is starting to deal with these issues, both in fiction and in non-fiction. It is not insignificant that the most talked about TV series of the moment is the Korean Squid Game, an unsettling depiction of what desperation and poverty can force a person to do in a capitalistic and unequal society; and the fact that the Oscar winners for Best Film of the last two years have been 2019s Parasite, a tragicomedy hinging on the disparity of income and the quality of life in a big city, and last year’s Nomadland, the story of a woman abandoning the remains of a life lived in the hamster's wheel of conventional prosperity and embracing a nomadic existence off the grid.

“You could summarize Spin Time as a documentary about the poor as you've never seen them before,” says Italian author, stand-up comedian and satirist Sabina Guzzanti, known internationally for her 2005 documentary Viva Zapatero! Her new film, Spin Time, subtitled How Tiring Democracy Is!, had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last September and will be screened in New York in early December. “The film portrays the world of the invisible poor, who refuse to play the victims here,” says Guzzanti, who is famous in Italy for her parodies and hilarious impressions of Italian politicians (her Berlusconi is a classic).