Nowadays we are used to seeing images and listening to political opinions that make us think of immigrants as numbers. But who really are these people? And why do they decide to embark on a journey that sometimes can lead to death?

This is the question asked by the filmmaker who travels around his land in search of stories to tell. His land, Irpinia, is a small territory in the internal areas of Campania (called the "bone lands"), which has always been affected by the phenomenon of emigration, and which today, thanks to the SPRAR and SAI projects, welcomes refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Nigeria and other parts of the world. And to answer this question, he meets various boys and girls...

Director's note

Divided into chapters, using the alternating editing technique and the creative aid of black and white, the film is structured in such a way that past and present merge in a sort of stream-of-consciousness temporal unicum. Forever and always is then a reflection on contemporary migrations that remind us of the ones we had in the past. A sort of research on the field, from the social-anthropological point of view, about the topic of the journey and world migrations.
However, it is also the tale of a territory: Irpinia, a small stretch of land on the Apennines, in southern Italy, corresponding to the internal areas of the Campania region (called bone lands). A land that has always suffered the historical isolation and cultural and economic backwardness compared to the coastal areas, and that is still fighting for adequate infrastructures and roads in order to reduce that gap. A land that has always been affected by migration phenomena, where today young people leave right after high school and they often never come back.
The choice of the filmmaker to film almost everything "in subjective" is therefore an attempt to increase the involvement in the stories and in the lives of the boys and girls interviewed. It will allow the film to become a sort of internal journey into the narrator's conscience, a "road movie" of the soul. The life dreamed and the life lived. The state of things in a territory that wants to appear beautiful and captivating but it's full of contradictions and “pain of living”, and always has its suitcase ready. These are just some of the points that will be faced in Irpinia. However, those who have arrived here have other problems and they often decide to leave this place too, in order to hope for better living conditions.
The narrative line thus develops on two parallel tracks: the time of the journey (which the boys and girls had to face to get to Italy) and the journey through time (which Italians have undertaken from the end of the 19th century to today). This double track will allow us to carry on two parallel stories which will ultimately make the filmmaker the co-protagonist of the story, and his internal anxieties the object of dramaturgy. The memories of the emigrant grandfather, the conditions of his children's school merge with memories and life of the boys in the SPRAR. Cinema verité, where the director himself becomes a character and lives with the people he is filming. As in some works by Michael Moore, who participates and is present as an active subject in the movie, the eye, the hands and the words of the operator-author will watch the events flow, will accept cups of tea, and will react with lines. However, he will never interfere in the subject and therefore in the life he is documenting. A passive action, participated from an emotional and empathetic point of view, but above all endured, as it happens to most people.