Children of Fate

In 1961, Robert Young and Michael Roemer made Cortile Cascino, a black and white documentary on the conditions of life in the ghettos of Palermo : insalubrity, extreme poverty, violence and illiteracy. The figure of Angela stands out, married too young and already illtreated by life. Almost thirty years later, Robert Young returned to Palermo with his son Andrew and daughter-in-law Susan Todd, and found Angela again. Going back and forth between sequences shot in 1961 and those of 1991 shot in colour by Andrew and Susan, Children of Fate tells the sequence to Angela’s story. The Cortile Cascino area was destroyed some twenty years ago. Angela and her children now live in modern apartments. But the past still exerts a powerful grip on them.