Geographies of Collapse. The Dystopian Landscape in Italian Cinema

Matteo Santandrea, Ph.D.

This project investigates the representation of dystopian landscapes in Italian cinema from the mid-1960s to the present, situating itself within a broader line of research on the cinematic construction of physical and social space. Rather than mapping dystopia as a genre, the project approaches it as a critical mode of vision: a deforming and analytical gaze through which Italian cinema has reimagined the national territory as a space of crisis, collapse and social transformation.
Drawing on ecocriticism, cultural geography, anthropology of space and film studies, the research interprets cinematic space as an active dramaturgical and symbolic agent, capable of generating visual and emotional tension and of shaping the behavior of on-screen subjects. The core of the study consists of close film analysis based on a selected corpus of works that employ space in a consciously dystopian way, privileging less explored forms of spatial dystopia beyond the well-studied urban periphery.
The project traces a genealogy of Italian dystopian cinema across three phases – from political modernity in the 1960s—70s, through derivative and cyberpunk imaginaries in the 1980s—90s, to contemporary ecological dystopias – culminating in recent films that portray environmental collapse as systemic and moral crisis. Alongside film analysis, the research also considers extratextual materials such as posters and photographic sources, situating cinema within a wider visual and cultural network.