Ius Auxilium

Directed by Alessandra del Giudice

Synopsis:
Licia waits anxiously outside the bathroom of a community center. Abram in the bathroom prepares an envelope with a "dose". Finally Abram comes out of the bathroom and the precious exchange takes place. Licia meets her friend Sonia who bought the syringes, while Abram drinks a beer with Fabio telling him that, due to Italian laws, he can neither study nor work and for this reason he has undertaken a mysterious new job. Everything suggests a deadly business. But nothing is as it seems. The one between Lygia and Abram is a 'deal for life'.

Director Statement:
The earth, in which you are born by pure chance, chains you. Walls, seas and deserts decide who has certain rights and who does not. Who has the right to leave, to work, to bring a child into the world. Laws change in different countries, in accordance with political convenience, but the theme of human rights remains universal, granted to the Western, heterosexual, rich majority and prohibited to those who do not fit into a pattern of power. In my film, two great little stories of exclusion come together: that of Licia, homosexual, who with her partner pursues a dream of motherhood and that of Abram, a non-EU citizen who cannot work or study in Italy and decides to sell his sperm. Ius Auxilium, is the "right to help" mutually. Infact, Ius Asylium is not guaranteed to everyone. Over a million girls and boys born in Italy to foreign parents are not Italian; they often manage to obtain the Ius Soli only after reaching the age of majority. Many young people who flee poverty and war and seek a new life in the West often fall into the trap of crime and deal drugs. In Italy, unlike the majority of European countries, artificial insemination is prohibited for singles and LGBT couples, who are forced to resort to sperm banks and foreign donors. The ironic, raw and provocative way in which the short film is shot itself suggests removing the veil from the rampant hypocrisy and anticipated a topic that is becoming very topical: in December 2022, after finishing shooting, a black market for sperm worth thousands of euros was discovered in Naples. The film is dedicated to minorities who face life with courage and imagination. It is a metaphor and a message of hope: life, despite walls, seas and oppression, sometimes wins.