Cash

Take two ten euro bills (Romeo & Juliet), keep your eye on them as they leave the automatic teller, let them live their lives and try to follow them, when they pass from hand to hand, from shop to shop, city to city. The program’s aim, besides that of satisfying the curiosity always linked to the mysterious circulation of money, is to describe a little piece of the country through the exchanges of two ten euro bills, called Romeo and Juliet, and through the interviews made with those who managed and spent these bills. The trip begins in the Frankfurt Mint where the banknotes are “born.” The two that are selected are sent to a bank in the center of Milan where they are marked with the names Romeo and Juliet and inserted in an automatic teller. And the adventure begins: the following of the banknotes by the film troop and the interviews with people in whose pockets they settle, even if only briefly. The interviews offer the real opportunity to take up the theme of money, salaries, relationships to money, life styles. Every city, village, region lends itself to this way of telling. A trip from Emilia Romagna to Sicily is not only a journey north to south, but also a journey from the region with the highest per capita income to the one with the lowest. It’s the money that chooses the people. The work puts in focus the relationship Italians have with money, beyond their economic conditions. The program succeeds in making Italians speak about a subject that they usually speak about reluctantly.