Rebels Without a Cause: Youth and Terrorism in Contemporary Italian Film

Synopsis This essay explores the representation of Italian terrorists in recent generational films set in the 1960s and 1970s. While they foreground the protagonists’ youth and celebrate it as a historically new condition, these coming-of-age narratives typically present radicalism either in terms of youthful idealism or youthful error, with corresponding nostalgic or revisionist approaches that obscure its ideological basis. An analysis of the selective generational appeal deployed by four recent films through narrative structure, style and casting highlights an alternative reading of the postideological approach to the representation of terrorism in the 21 century.