Anywhere Anytime (2024)

“Anywhere Anytime” is a 2024 Italian drama and the feature-length fiction debut of director Milad Tangshir. The film was presented at the 81st Venice Film Festival in the International Critics’ Week section, and was also screened at festivals in Toronto and other international showcases. The lead role is played by Ibrahima Sambou, with Moussa Dicko Diango and Success Edemakhiota also among the key cast members. At the center of the story is Issa, a young undocumented migrant from Senegal who is trying to stay afloat in Turin. After losing his previous job, he starts working as a courier and spends his last money on a bicycle — the only tool that gives him a chance to earn a living. But during his very first shift, the bicycle is stolen, and the hero sets off on an exhausting journey through the city to recover not just an object, but his own chance of survival. The film clearly refers to the classics of Italian neorealism, above all Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves”. But “Anywhere Anytime” does not feel like a simple imitation of old cinema. Tangshir brings the neorealist perspective into the 21st century, where post-war poverty is replaced by modern precarity: courier work, lack of documents, migrant vulnerability, and the invisibility of a person to the city and the system. The film’s main strength is its honest simplicity. There is no artificially heightened drama here, no grand speeches, and no attempt to turn a social issue into a slogan. The tension grows out of the situation itself: the hero has no safety margin. For someone else, a stolen bicycle may be an inconvenience; for Issa, it is a catastrophe, because along with it disappear his money, work, safety, and future. Turin is shown in the film not as a tourist postcard, but as a living, cold, and indifferent organism. Streets, markets, train stations, outskirts, and central districts become part of a route of despair. The camera follows the hero almost documentarily, preserving a sense of real time and physical exhaustion. As a result, the viewer does not simply observe the search for the bicycle, but gradually begins to feel how alien a city can be to a person without status or protection. The use of non-professional actors is especially effective. Ibrahima Sambou plays Issa without unnecessary theatricality: his character is restrained, cautious, sometimes confused, but constantly tense inside. This restraint is where the film’s power lies. He does not directly ask for pity, but makes us see a person whom society usually notices only as a function — a courier, a migrant, a temporary worker. “Anywhere Anytime” is a quiet but painfully relevant drama about how easily the fragile balance of life can be destroyed for someone who has almost nothing. It is a film about a bicycle that becomes a symbol of dignity, labor, and hope. Not the most spectacular, but a precise and deeply humane picture that continues the tradition of social cinema and shows modern Europe through the fate of those who live in its shadow.