You may well live in the same city, do the same job, belong to the same social class and have almost identical families consisting of a wife, two children and an assortment of aunts, uncles and grandparents, but none of this necessarily means that you are equal. Paradoxically you do not have the same rights, nor can your children go to the same school. You are not allowed to do your job and forbidden from keeping your business open and you become very familiar with intolerance and rejection. You discover that you are thought of as being “different” because of your birth and because of your race. In the past this happened to Jews and black people; today it is happening immigrants and people from the Third World.
Concorrenza sleale – “Unfair Competition” - is a film about the racial laws that sprang up almost overnight in 1938 in Italy against Jews. Suddenly there was a whole new set of absurd rules that managed to be both ridiculous, and, as so often happens in this merry little country of ours ludicrously grotesque. This film tells the story of two shopkeepers, one of whom is Jewish, whose material shops are situated next door to one another. Initially each man considers the other his professional rival but as soon as the full horror of the racial laws becomes apparent, the two shopkeepers discover a precious friendship and a new-found solidarity that is born of adversity.
Unfair Competition is a bitter-sweet comedy about one very shameful episode of our history.