Black superhero takes the fight to Italian attitudes to immigrants

A GROUNDBREAKING television series about a black youth who can turn himself invisible has been hailed as a turning point in Italy’s difficult history of racial integration.

Zero is based on the lives of young black people living on Milan’s periphery, the second generation children of migrants who arrived 20 or 30 years ago. It stars 25-year-old Giuseppe Dave Seke as Omar, a shy young man who earns a living delivering pizza on his bicycle. He discovers that he has the magical ability to disappear when he wants to – an allusion to the invisibility of Italy’s migrant communities living on the neglected fringes of big cities.

Nicknamed Zero after the basketball shirt with the number 0 that he wears, he uses his superpower to help his friends and protect the suburb from rising rents and gentrification.

Seke, who was born in Padua to Congolese parents, said that when he was cast as the main character, he experienced “10 seconds of happiness and then 12 hours of panic”.

“For me, this is an important moment in Italy because it is the first series with mostly black protagonists,” he said. “It’s important for the black community and I hope it can open the door to other stories that don’t have a voice.”

Switch on the TV in Italy and you are confronted with a sea of white faces, from sparkly showgirls to Neapolitan gangsters. There are almost no personalities from ethnic minorities, despite a sizeable population of people with African and Latin American roots.

When a businessman of Nigerian origin was elected the country’s first black senator in 2018, it made headline news. Nor are there black soldiers, police, public officials, doctors or scientists.

The eight-part Netflix series, which began airing last week in 190 countries, has been acclaimed by the Italian media as breaking down stereotypes.

The Italian edition of Esquire acclaimed it as “the Italian TV series that will change everything”. Black migrants in southern Italy who eke out a living picking fruit are often treated abominably. Yet Seke is an optimist. “The situation is improving,” he said. “It’s a good moment for Italy.”

The series is based on a novel written by Antonio Dikele Distefano, 27. His five books explore the experiences of second-generation migrants born in Italy.

“My greatest wish is that a black Italian actor comes to be seen as normal,” he told an Italian news magazine.