From Circulation to Suspension: Infrastructure, Precarity, and Marginality in Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro Gra (2013)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2280-9481/23447Parole chiave:
Precarity, Infrastructure, Labour, Documentary, RosiAbstract
In this article, I build on recent work in infrastructure studies to explore how Sacro Gra (Gianfranco Rosi, 2013) visualises the social and material worlds that gather around infrastructural margins. I argue that Rosi’s documentary provides an especially productive venue for examining the tension between infrastructural aspiration and infrastructural failure, foregrounding the forms of precarity, isolation, and everyday improvisation that arise where infrastructures are incomplete or unevenly distributed. My aim is to expand the critical frameworks through which we interpret cinematic engagements with infrastructure and to suggest that Sacro Gra reframes the Roman ring road as a liminal and porous zone in which infrastructural “bleeding” becomes perceptible through rescale, shot composition, and the rhythms of labour.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Jacopo Francesco Mascoli

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