Get out of Italy. Leave Italy as long as you can. Go study in London, in Paris, go to America, if you have the chance, but leave this country. Italy is a country to be destroyed: a beautiful and useless place, destined to die.

Thus, in “The Best of Youth” by Marco Tullio Giordana, the old professor advises the young aspiring doctor – played by Luigi Lo Cascio – to escape from our country, masterfully summarizing that sense of frustration and desperate wait-and-see that especially pushes young people to leave, once and for all. However, albeit to a lesser extent, there is a contrary phenomenon.

Compared to those who leave, those who decide to return are still in the minority, mainly due to the lack of adequately paid job opportunities. But man does not live on work alone and it is undeniable that the Italian lifestyle is still one of the best in the world. The reasons that push Italians to return to their homeland are many and deserve to be explored in order to better understand the reality that surrounds us inside and outside our borders, because the grass of the neighbor is sometimes not as green as it appears from afar.

The objective of the program is to delve into a positive and proactive, creative and experimental Italy, to dismantle some stereotypes related to realities outside and within our borders, to understand the deep motivations that prompted people first to leave and then to return to their homes and highlight the pros and cons of life in Italy, showing what opportunities people who decide to return may be able to find.