Le montagne hanno gli occhi

The history of the NO TAV movement is the story of a community in conflict with a distant and powerful state.

Since the movement's inception 30 years ago, the distance between the state and the community has grown. Trials and repression, police violence, and the militarization of an entire valley have fueled a lasting sense of fracture in the way many residents relate to institutions.

Within this shift, the implicit delegation agreement by which citizens place the monopoly of legitimate force in the state in exchange for protection is beginning to crack.

The militarization of construction sites, judicial indictments, and the constant presence of law enforcement all convey the image of a vertical and distant institutional power. In contrast, public assemblies, technical committees, and counter-information networks build a form of widespread power, rooted in the territory and founded on direct participation.

The project thus follows the silent narrative not only of those who live in the mountains, and of the mountains themselves, but above all of the complex relationship that develops between an inhabitant and their land, between institutions and citizens, between resistance and belonging, and between different forms of power.

The story of the NO TAV movement thus becomes the story of a people who feel deprived of legitimacy: the mirror of a community that, perceiving its right to self-determination stripped away, generates autonomous forms of organization and decision-making to choose its own future.