After the Bridge

An intimate portrait of Valeria Collina, the mother of Youssef, one of the jihadists who took part in the 2017 London Bridge attack.

For 20 years, Valeria Collina, an Italian woman who converted to Islam, had lived in Morocco. She moved to Bologna in 2015, residing in a small house on the outskirts of the city. Two years later, she found herself besieged by television crews and the global media as a result of her son’s action. Her opposition to what Youssef did was unequivocal. She even refused to attend his funeral. Davide Rizzo and Marzia Toscano’s film reflects on Valeria’s life since; her feelings of grief as a mother, but also her thoughts as a feminist and one-time theatre actress who chose to follow a religious path. Combining archive footage with extensive interviews, After the Bridge is a poetic reflection on Valeria’s questions about the passage of time, faith, spirituality and, ultimately, loss.