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A Hospital Turning Twenty Should Not Be Good News

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Amman, Jordan – July 2026 I have a friend here in Amman. His name is Hayato. One day, over a coffee, he told me about the hospital where he worked. “Ciro, this hospital is different.” I asked him what he meant. He told me about a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières, a place that has been treating people wounded by war for twenty years. “You should come and see it. You should document it.” So I did. Twenty years A hospital turning twenty should be good news. But this is a different kind of anniversary. The hospital in Amman specialises in reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation for people injured by war. Over the years, patients have arrived from Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Gaza. They come with burns, amputations, complex fractures, injuries caused by bullets, explosions and collapsing buildings. Some stay for months. Surgery is only the beginning. Rehabilitation, physiotherapy, prosthetics, psychological support and s...
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AFTER THE BOMBS, DURING THE BOMBS

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The invisible danger of Gaza Families living among the rubble in Gaza - every ordinary gesture can conceal an invisible danger. © Mohammed Ibrahim / Unsplash Opening Out of pure curiosity. That's how it all started. I came across a video on Instagram: a Palestinian man was holding an unexploded missile, showing its markings on camera, “American-made”, fired by Israel. Around him, the bombing was still ongoing. I said to myself: this is pure madness. And immediately after, a question lodged itself in my head that I couldn't shake loose: how do you handle a situation like this? How do you make a territory safe before, during, and after a conflict? Curiosity drove me to dig, to search, to try to understand. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based organization with consultative status at the United Nations, estimates that over 85,000 tonnes of explosives have been dropped on Gaza since the beginning of the conflict, a figure some analysts project as high as 150,000...
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A Moon Will Rise from the Darkness

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Originally published in Italian on Il Gazzettino Vesuviano: Read the original Italian article here Sold-Out at Rainbow Theatre in Amman for Disunited Nations : Francesca Albanese Speaks of “Distortions” and Persecution – Exclusive Interview AMMAN – I arrive at the Rainbow Theatre around 8:30 PM on February 22, 2026. The line outside is already long. Upstairs, the book table is overwhelmed. English copies of A Moon Will Rise from the Darkness: Reports on Israel’s Genocide in Palestine by Francesca Albanese sell out in less than five minutes — completely gone. Inside the theater, the room is packed. Some attendees sit on the floor, others along the aisles. When the UN Special Rapporteur enters, the audience erupts into prolonged applause. The screening begins: Disunited Nations , a documentary by Christophe Cotteret exploring the contradictions of the United Nations multilateral system in the face of contemporary conflicts, with particular focus on Palestine. ...
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WHEN THERE IS AN EAST AND A WEST EVEN IN AMMAN

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Hasmi Shemali, street art telling the story of human rights by Ciro Scuotto Read the original article in Italian on Il Gazzettino Vesuviano I have been living in Amman for more than a year now. I travel back and forth to Naples often, but here I no longer use a GPS, I speak broken Arabic—just enough to buy coffee and bread—and when I introduce myself, I often say my name is Abu Nour. It’s my way of saying: I’m trying to stay. At first, Amman felt like a welcoming city, booming and expanding. New, expensive electric cars were everywhere. A widespread, almost ostentatious sense of wealth. I kept wondering where all that money came from, in a country that produces little and imports almost everything. Over time, I realized that Amman only lets itself be understood on the surface. To truly know it, you have to move. Go inside. Look longer. The first tour is always the same: downtown, the Roman Theatre, the souk, the Citadel. An ancient history, shaped also by colonialism. ...
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Gaza Increasingly Alone: “Aut, Aut to Médecins Sans Frontières”

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Originally published in Italian on Il Gazzettino Vesuviano . This winter has been extremely harsh for Palestinians. The cold has been severe, the rain seemingly endless. Images of flooded camps and tents submerged in mud overlap with those of continuous explosions. Alongside daily destruction, winter itself has become a slow and cynical weapon. According to a UNICEF report dated January 20, 2026, at least seven children have died of hypothermia this winter in the Gaza Strip — including newborns and very young children — due to exposure to cold without adequate shelter. A United Nations update cited by Anadolu Agency raises that number to eleven children who died from hypothermia in extreme winter conditions. These figures are not limited to war-related health risks; they show how winter itself has become lethal for a population forced to live in tents, makeshift shelters, or damaged homes, without protection from cold, rain, and humidity. To this already extreme scenario, a...
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What Remains of us

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Interview with Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who entered Gaza on 19 December 2024. Originally published in Italian on Il Gazzettino Vesuviano . I met Cardinal Pizzaballa at Fiumicino Airport on 9 January 2026. I was heading to Amman, Jordan. So was he. Since May 2024 I have been living in Amman, for family and work reasons. It is not my first time in this part of the world: here I feel a natural familiarity that rarely makes me feel like a foreigner. Back in 2012, I wrote and directed a documentary on Syrian refugees in Lebanon, in the months immediately following the first clashes in Syria. The Cardinal and I were standing in line, very close to each other. At first glance I did not recognize him immediately: he was dressed as a priest, yes, but not as a cardinal. Then the images of him walking through Gaza came back to my mind. A natural impulse helped me overcome my embarrassment and I called out to him, right there, before entering the airpor...
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PIASSA, AN URBAN WOUND AT THE HEART OF ADDIS

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  PIASSA, FERITA URBANA NEL CUORE DI ADDIS Chronicles from Addis Ababa before and after the fracture by Ciro Scuotto Addis Ababa, 2019. I arrived in Piassa in 2019 with few certainties and only one real guide: Marco Di Nunzio, a friend I met at the University of Naples “L’Orientale.” Marco comes from Corso Garibaldi. From time to time we still manage to keep in touch—far too rarely, unfortunately, as happens to those who grow up, live, and move; people are constantly on the move. Today he is Associate Professor in Urban Anthropology at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Marco has studied for years the urban life of Addis Ababa, its street economies, ways of dwelling, and inequalities. He earned a PhD at Oxford and is the author of   The Act of Living . It is he who introduces me to the soul of the neighborhood and its deepest identity: Arada. Before my arrival, Marco gives me a few but precise pointers. He points out a place: an old pastry shop called Enrico, still...
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SCAMPIA, THE VELA BUILDINGS AND THE VOID THEY LEAVE BEHIND

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Le vele e il vuoto che resta   Photo-essay Anyone who knows me and follows my work knows that I’ve never been interested in beauty or luxury. I am drawn instead to humanity and to the outskirts. I am interested in suffering—but even more than suffering itself, I care about the stories of people who suffer, struggle, and do everything they can to survive. Over the years, I’ve worked and photographed in the peripheries of Serbia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Lebanon—and as I write this, I am in Jordan. Yet I could not avoid returning once more to the Vele of Scampia: a place I know deeply, and where, in some way, I grew up. In 2020, my producer Gaetano Di Vaio asked me to write and direct a documentary about the demolition of the Vele. I titled it   “Addio dolce casa mia”   ( Goodbye, My Sweet Home ). The process began with the Green Vela, known as “the Tower.” It was January. It was cold—just like now. The Green Vela was demolished on February 20, 2020. Today, all the Vele are empty....
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"Hope"

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🎥   Hope   – A Film About Possibility, Dignity, and the Right to Dream Over the past few months, I had the opportunity to work with   Amala Education   in Amman, Jordan — an organisation that provides transformative learning to young people who are often displaced, excluded, or left behind by traditional systems. During my time there, I directed a short documentary called   "Hope"   — a visual portrait of the Amala learning community, seen through the eyes of the students themselves. This film is about more than education. It’s about resilience, dignity, and the small, radical act of imagining a different future. 🔗   Watch the film here:  Why This Film Matters As a filmmaker and communication specialist working in humanitarian and development contexts, I’m often struck by how stories of crisis overshadow the quiet, persistent work of rebuilding.   Hope   tries to do the opposite: it centers the everyday brilliance of students who refus...
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"AddioDolceCasaMia" trailer ITA

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