Gaetano Di Filippo

Rome, 2014 07 10: Selam Palace is a squatted empty huge building in the outskirts of Rome. Its inhabitants are long term refugees and asylum seekers coming from the Horn of Africa (Erithrea, Somalia, Ethiopia) and Sudan; some of them, a population of about 800, are residents but seasonally, when migrants wave from North Africa to Italy across the mediterranean sea, the population increases up to 2500 units, many of them being separate foreign minors travelling through Italy to North European countries like Sweden, France or Germany, to join their relatives or to meet better inmigration policies. Ali is a Sudanese man who ran off his country because of political prosecution. He struggled against the President Omar Al-Bashir and his establishment when he was a student at University, then was forced to leave the country. He lives in Selam Palace from 2009; works sometimes as a market stallholder and dreams to have the opportunity to return back home one day, in a reconciled and peaceful Sudan.