Lives in the Malls (2014)

The "24/7" economic model has become successful after the liberalisation of the opening hours, after the "Salva Italia" decree. The new job contracts didn't distinguish anymore between working and days and holidays and, changing the balance between working and spare time, they impose an always more frenetic pace. The majority of large-scale distribution employees are women around 35. Many of them are also mothers who carry on their own family, in a country in which the welfare spending decreases every year. The documentary "Lives in the malls" comes from the need to show how families change, beginning from female workers in the malls, which are a stable presence in peripheries and a resource for young people searching for a job, in such a moment of crisis. How are life projects and personal dreams endangered in such a moment of economic and social crisis? This movie is the final part of the project "Stories of saleswomen during the era of the malls", which ran through the entire country with 20 public screenings, and this is the result of a shared and open path made of choral narration.