Family is for Everyone
The title of the special issue directed by Michela Murgia arrives powerful, precise, and unequivocal: “Who you choose, who you take care of, who you welcome, who you love”. Even relationships that go beyond the recognized model. Bonds, beyond genetic codes. “Family is really a choice,” Michela Andreozzi, director and actress, already confided to us weeks ago as a guest juror at the Riviera International Film Festival in Sestri Levante. “It’s a network, a commitment of loyalty. And Michela Murgia, with the people around her, is showing us that.”
Essential Ingredients of Family
If I ask you what are the essential ingredients, what comes to mind? “Presence, constancy and affection. Family has nothing to do with its members. It is the great act of love that we make in our lives, then who is composed of who doesn’t care: I have a partner, a dog, some putative daughters who are my students, at least fifteen sisters, a mother and a couple of fathers, because I have an uncle who has always lived at home with us. Blood has nothing to do with it: there are many single alternatives that must be included in the concept of family, which has nothing traditional about it. For what is the traditional family, if it ever worked, today it does not work anymore”.
Choosing Not to Have Children
Deciding not to have children is also a choice. Have you ever felt discriminated against for this? “Let’s say that I am a breakthrough striker, I also wrote a book on the subject, Don’t Ask Me Anymore, which I know has helped a lot of people. So no, I never felt it, but I have a life a bit out of the ordinary: if I had had a less open education, if I had grown up elsewhere, perhaps I would have posed more problems in front of not feeling the need for a child. I had the freedom to choose, to be whole without anything else”.
