Living in a Postcard

Director: Christian Nicoletta
Italy, 2021, 52'
with Turkish and English subtitles

For years tourism has sold us an idealised image of tourist destinations, ever increasing, creating economic growth but also  drastically transforming,  to the point of irreversibly distorting these postcard images. The problems caused by overtourism have become very clear to the tourist operators and administrators.  They look for solutions but are lacking the means and a common vision. Living in a Postcard embarks us on a journey between Cinque Terre, London, Venice, Barcelona and the Norwegian fjords, where we discover the root causes of these problems and if they will still exist after the pandemic. “Responsible Tourism” suggests that it is possible to have a tourism model that cares about residents and their needs. Sometimes the citizens organise civic groups that ask the administration to not look at tourism as the only resource for the city, or the administrations try to tackle overtourism. The online tourism platforms propose the same tourism model in every destination. Another global tourism economy is cruise tourism.  When Covid-19 arrived in March 2020, tourism stopped, the problems associated with tourism have gone.  But have they really disappeared?