'Anytime Anywhere' recycles an Italian movie classic

'Bicycle Thieves' gets updated to explore the immigrant experience

Ibrahima Sandou plays a Senegalese immigrant hunting for his stolen bike in “Anytime Anywhere.”

The Wisconsin Film Festival programs both brand-new movies and restorations of older classics. So it’s fitting that “Anywhere Anytime” is sort of a combination of both.

The new film from Iranian-born director Milad Tangshir speaks very much to the world we’re living in, following an undocumented immigrant from Senegal named Issa (Ibrahima Sandou) as he tries to make a living in Turin, Italy.

But the movie is also a direct homage to one of the classics of Italian neorealist cinema, Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves.” The two films are in conversation with each other, showing how Italy and the world have changed since 1948.

We first see Issa loading produce off a truck, nervously looking over his shoulder for the immigration authorities looking for people like him. His boss, sensing that Issa will be caught soon, fires him rather than pay a fine to the government.

Issa is desperate to find work, sharing a room in public housing with several other immigrants that’s little more than a shipping container. Help seems to come from a fellow immigrant, Mario (Moussa Dicko Diango), a cheerful guy who seems like he’s a rung or two above Issa on the economic ladder.

Mario still has his account from his days as a food delivery driver for a company called Anytime Anywhere, and offers to let Issa use it. He wrangles a rusty used bike, and soon Issa is whizzing through the streets of Turin, making deliveries. Tangshir captures how the speed of Issa’s cycling expresses the feeling of liberation he feels at finally making money.

Of course, it doesn’t last. The bicycle is stolen, and Issa begins a cross-city journey to get it back. On the way, he sees the best and worst that the city has to offer, from racist local toughs to a monastery that provides free food for the poor, and a lonely old woman taking care of her ailing husband. And all the while, Issa can’t go to the police or risk being arrested himself and deported.

“Anywhere Anytime” beautifully captures the streets and the people of Turin, scored to the African and Middle Eastern pop music that Issa would likely have in his earbuds. But, despite the urgency of Issa’s quest, the pace of the film is almost leisurely. I would have liked to have seen Issa meet more people, have more happen to him. The film reminds me of a Dardennes brothers film (especially “Tori and Lokita”), and I couldn’t help but think about how their films are often genuinely suspenseful without sacrificing their authenticity or sense of moral outrage.

Despite the lack of narrative drive, “Anytime Anywhere” is still a visceral and empathetic film about the immigrant experience. The film’s name is a double-edged sword, suggesting both the promise and possibilities of life in a new world for an undocumented immigrant, and the overwhelming sense of peril and danger that comes with it.

“Anytime Anywhere” does not yet have U.S. distribution.