JICMS 10 (3) pp. 531–536 Intellect Limited 2022 www.intellectbooks.com 531 Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies Volume 10 Number 3 © 2022 Intellect Ltd Book Review. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/jicms_00146_5 BOOK REVIEWS ACTING ACROSS BORDERS: MOBILITY AND IDENTITY IN ITALIAN CINEMA, ALBERTO ZAMBENEDETTI (2021) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 256 pp., ISBN 978-1-47443-986-2, h/bk, $105.00 Reviewed by Charles L. Leavitt IV, University of Notre Dame An impressive amount of movement went into writing this book on mobil- ity. To carry out his research, Alberto Zambenedetti consulted materials in libraries and archives across North and South America as well as those in Italy, working in at least sixteen different international institutions, accord- ing to the author’s own admittedly incomplete list. The pay-off for this prodigious travel is evident throughout the book, as Zambenedetti pinpoints precise details in the films he examines thanks to the vast array of resources he has managed to consult. To cite just one representative instance, he notes that in Luciano Serra, Pilota (Luciano Serra, Pilot) (Alessandrini 1940) the titu- lar aviator takes off not from Argentina, as is often assumed in the scholar- ship, but instead from Brazil: ‘the copy I was able to view at Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee of the Biennale di Venezia’, he explains, ‘contained a print-reel montage that reported Rio de Janeiro as the point of departure’ (34n9). This is by no means a minor matter, nor is it pedantic to point out that scholars have not always got it right. This book’s argument is that loca- tion matters in the analysis of Italian cinema, and travel between locations matters still more. Having travelled across three continents in search of films and parafilmic materials, Zambenedetti has acquired a remarkable range of references with which to substantiate his argument, allowing him to demon- strate how precise patterns of movement have shaped Italian identity on and off-screen, and to establish, as he puts it, how ‘“Italian cinematic mobilities” participated in the creation, the circulation, and the critique of ideas pertain- ing to “the nation”’ (4).