1 One of the first questions Gino and Fiore ask Spiro is “how old are you?” The old man holds up 10 fingers twice, communicating that he is 20 years old. In this scene, we see the old man struggling with his identity. He doesn’t know his own age, which is alarming for the viewer. Because Spiro thinks he hasn’t changed and is still 20 years old, we see he is fixed in an older generation. We will eventually learn in the film that Spiro represents the “old” Italy. In the scene where Gino is in the hospital with Spiro, the nurse says something about his papers which prompts Gino to say the words “Maybe he was Italian before, but he’s Albanian now.” Even though Gino says this about Spiro’s papers, what he truly means is that there is nothing Gino can see in him that identifies him as Italian in his eyes. Gino only knows the “new” Italy, filled with materialistic wants and its society’s representation of status. Spiro embodies the “old” Italy, which Gino is completely unfamiliar with. Spiro is still stuck in this past “old” Italy. Gino determined that Spiro has lost his identity as an Italian, because Italians have changed with the times and Spiro has not. Example Scene 2 In the scene in the Albanian countryside, Gino experiences one of the first signs he might be losing his Italian identity when enters a store and emerges to find someone has taken the tires off of his car. The Albanians were always interested in this materialistic item. As the embodiment of the “new” consumer-driven Italy, he is used to everyone having cars and is surprised when the poor Albanians vandalized his property. Gino complains and threatens the people around him, but no one understands him because they do not speak Italian or do not care. He then tries to explain that he needs the police and, when an Albanian man does not understand him, he gets increasingly frustrated that no one speaks his language. Nobody here can speak Italian, his native tongue. Gino realizes that his message doesn’t resonate with the Albanians. Gino begins to lose who he is here because by speaking in his primary language, he realized no one can understand him and his threats do not have an impact. Example Scene 3 The next scene we see Gino having to verify his Italian