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Raise Your Head

Name: Raise Your Head
Director: Alessandro Angelini
Released: 2009
Duration: 86 min

Representation Score

5.3/10

Fair

2009

Director

Alessandro Angelini

Runtime

86 minutes

Average Rating

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New Showbiz Analysis

Raise Your Head is a social realist drama that explores ethnic the way different parts of someone's identity overlap and the nuances of migrant integration. By focusing on a mixed-heritage family, the film moves beyond a homogeneous narrative to address post-colonial migration. While it challenges some patriarchal norms through Mero's role as a primary caregiver, it remains tied to traditional masculine legacies. The film's focus on the working class provides a grounded but narrow view of social dynamics.

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Category Breakdown

Does Raise Your Head have LGBTQ+ representation?

Fair

The film focuses on traditional family structures and romantic dynamics, with no visible LGBTQ+ characters or narratives that challenge these norms.

How does Raise Your Head portray gender?

Fair

Mero's role as a single father challenges conventional masculine archetypes but still reflects traditional masculine legacies, especially in projecting his unfulfilled ambitions onto his son.

How racially and ethnically diverse is Raise Your Head?

Good

The story centers on Lorenzo, a child of Italian and Albanian heritage, addressing the complexities of migration and ethnic integration in Northern Italy.

How does Raise Your Head represent religion and culture?

Fair

The film depicts the struggles of the working class using social realism, highlighting the fragility of traditional stability and focusing on underrepresented social strata.

Does Raise Your Head include disability representation?

Minimal

The narrative does not include any characters navigating physical, neurodivergent, or mental health disabilities.

Present on Screen

Engages strongly with ethnic the way different parts of someone's identity overlap through the mixed Italian and Albanian heritage of the central child character.
Challenges traditional masculine archetypes through the nuanced portrayal of single fatherhood.
Provides an authentic social realist depiction of the working class and the complexities of migrant integration.

Limited or Absent

No representation of LGBTQ+ identities or narratives critiquing traditional norms.
Lacks visibility for characters navigating physical, neurodivergent, or mental health disabilities.
Ties the father's ambitions to traditional masculine legacies.

Official Synopsis

Mero, a skilled shipyard worker, is a single father. His son Lorenzo, born from a relationship with an Albanian girl, is his only reason for living. The father dreams that the boy will become a champion boxer, to make up for his own anonymous career as an amateur in the ring. This is why he puts him through a tough training program, teaching him day after day to throw punches and protect himself from life's low blows. The balance of this relationship is disturbed by the return of Lorenzo's mother Denisa and by the son's meeting with young Ana. Mero's trials are not over and he must face up to pain, his prejudices and the remoteness of Italy's north east.

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