Written and directed by Emiliano Mancuso and Federico Romano

Photography by Emiliano Mancuso and Federico Romano

Curated by Giulia Tornari

A Project by Zona

When summer ends, Aesop’s fable tells us, the foresighted ant will spend a peaceful winter, the cicada that squandered everything instead will die in the cold. But what happens if the grains of wheat set aside by the ant are no longer enough to face the winter?

Cicadas is an intimate journey into the lives of those who, already retired or about to retire, find themselves still struggling to survive because the welfare state today is no longer sufficient to guarantee a peaceful “age of rest.”

For everyone, when winter came, the grains of wheat set aside were not enough, often not even to have the certainty of being able to sleep with a roof over their heads. But fate has not bent them these pensioners and exodus workers: they are not resigned but full of energy, because they know that it is their right to arrive alive at death. A choral tale, where through the voices of these ‘cicadas’ despite themselves, we are confronted with a possible truth, that the future of the young will be very similar to the present of the old.