Vito Finocchiaro

Unemployed, anguished, disheartened and with long stays inside their family nucleus. Young Italians look with great concern at the situation of a country that offers ever less opportunities for their future. Like Greece, Italy is one of the European countries where the youth unemployment rate has reached the highest levels following the recent economic crisis. In this current state of things the specter of emigration has returned and what once was a mass departure, today is a brain drain. The greatest failure of this country is taking place on the young. It seems like a jump back in time, when, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, poverty, hunger and despair created one of the greatest migratory flows in Italian history. Thousands of desperate people, especially people from southern Italy, suffered the consequences of what was considered a real exodus. In the Twenty-first Century nothing has changed and the regions of Southern Italy are still those where there is an unemployment rate of at least twice the EU average. A real emergency is the Sicilian one that highlights the ineffective work of the Italian government. Betrayed ambitions and precariousness. A social drama of alarming dimensions, in an island devastated, exploited and badly administered. In such a sad scenario, Sicilian kids have become very skeptical, but have not completely resigned themselves.Many of them have put their dreams in the drawer, accepting part-time and poorly paid jobs; others try to work alone, hoping they can stay in their own land. An example is Sebastiano and Giuseppe, 25 and 15 years old, two brothers who have the land of Sicily in their blood. The love for this island burns in their veins like the lava tongues that descend along the sides of Mount Etna, to whose slopes they live since they were born.Both urged by the vocation for animals, they decided to be the shepherds, like their father and their grandfather in a land as fascinating as it was cruel. The contact with nature, the value of tradition, a bond that unites these two boys with their island. That attachment that many have lost. A hard work, made of sacrifices, which requires tenacity, patience and a lot of adaptability.Wake up at five in the morning, milking, grazing, cheese production, cleaning the stables and then milking again. Slow and tiring rhythms, in fields where they often Wake up at five in the morning, milking, grazing, cheese production, cleaning the stables and then milking again. Slow and tiring rhythms, in fields where they often haven't permission to graze sheep. A continuous comparison with the cyclicity of nature. Long waits under the wind, snow, rain and choices made only according to the needs of the animals. Sebastiano also helps the sheep to give birth, he learned it from his father. Decisive moves, cold blood; he knows how important and decisive the first moments of birth are, but he also knows what is the destiny of many little lives that helps to come into the world. A bitter paradox. During the long hours of grazing, fatigue, silence and solitude are the only companions of these two brothers.The youngest, Giuseppe, often brings books and studies while watching the sheep. He wants to redeem an ancient profession and its social utility. When the day ends and the night, with its shadows, envelops the Valley of Etna, the boys give themselves a little 'rest living their age of adolescents between technology and social networks. That of Sebastiano and Giuseppe is a continuous struggle, one having to arrange day after day, but with the awareness that that life belongs to him, because that life is within them since they came into the world. The passion for animals, the vitality of their young age, pushed them to save some horses from slaughter and now they dream of creating a riding school where they can practice recreational horse riding for children with disabilities, but not only this.