Award-winning documentary shines light on Edinburgh’s Italo-Scots community

A mini documentary detailing the challenges faced by Edinburgh’s Italo-Scots contingent before, during and after the Second World War has won a prestigious award at this month’s Scottish Short Film Festival (SSFF).

Philip Contini, Olivia d’Annunzio and Gloria Rossi Bee talk about the good and bad sides about being an Italian immigrant living in Edinburgh.

The ten‑minute short Dolce Caledonia, directed by Kezia Sheard, came out top in the Best Documentary category at the SSFF awards this month.

The idea came to Kezia after completing a dissertation on the Italian Scottish community, and its contribution to the Scottish catering industry. She finished her work feeling like there were still some more “interesting stories yet to be told”.

She contacted her old school friends Calum Mowatt and Caitlin Deery at Neon Eye Productions, an independent production company in 
Edinburgh, who agreed to help her make a short film on the community.

Kezia said: “I studied Italian at the University of Edinburgh and I learnt about the Italian Scottish community last year whilst attending an external language class at Festival Theatre, where I met second and third generation Italians learning Italian for the first time.”

Calum Mowat said: “It was something I knew very little about. You go about walking in and around Edinburgh and other Scottish towns seeing the legacy in the form of fish and chip shops and ice cream shops with Italian names, but you don’t really know where that comes from.”

With only a three-person crew, barely any budget and months of filming ahead, Kezia recalls the whole process being “quite difficult but I think we pulled it off”.

Detailing the premise behind the film, Kezia said: “It’s a short documentary that follows three second and third generation Italians living in Edinburgh and the establishment of one of the biggest 
immigrant communities in Scotland.

“With a particular focus on the Italian influence on Scottish catering industry, the film explores personal family accounts of wartime experiences and what it meant to be an ‘enemy‑alien’ living in 
Edinburgh”.

The mini‑documentary has already received positive feedback across Scotland and the international community.

Gloria Rossi Bee, one of the interviewees in the documentary says: “Because of the lack of immigrants, the Italians did look like immigrants because you know they were 
different. You did not want to make yourself obvious.”

Olivia D’Annunzio, another interviewee, recalls what it meant to be an Italian in Scotland during wartime: “We used to have to shut the door of the back shop, so nobody would see that we were eating spaghetti”.