Alum mother and son explore family roots in film
Margaret “Peg” Verdi ’76 and Clenét Verdi-Rose ’04 collaborated to write, direct and produce “Radici,” a powerful documentary exploring Italian heritage that has won several awards.
“Radici” offers a fascinating lens through which to explore the ways in which culture connects people across continents and generations. It had its East Coast premiere on May 17, 2024, at the Capitol Theatre in Arlington, Mass., as part of the Global Cinema Film Festival of Boston. “It was the day before my 20-year reunion, it was a pretty crazy weekend,” noted Clenét, who still made it to campus for events.
Several Wheaton College alums who attended Reunion also went to the screening in Arlington, Peg said.
The movie won its director (Clenét) the Special Recognition Award in the Best Documentary Feature Film category at the festival. It also won a Best Feature Documentary Award at the Florence Film Awards and at the Milan Gold Awards in 2023.
The Feast of St. Anthony, a summertime celebration in Boston’s North End, that the mother-son duo has attended since Clenét was a child, set the groundwork for their intergenerational collaboration. Clenét, who was a studio art major at Wheaton, wrote and directed the 64-minute film; Peg, who majored in urban studies, was the producer.
“My mom used to take me when I was a kid to Boston, and we would go to the Feast of St. Anthony. When she started doing research about where our family came from because she wanted to get U.S. citizenship, she tracked [our roots] back to the town of Montefalcione [Italy],” Clenét said.
Researching her lineage in a quest to gain dual citizenship, Peg found out that her grandmother and great-grandparents immigrated to Boston from Montefalcione in the early 1900s, which happens to be where the Feast of St. Anthony originated.
Clenét received a grant that allowed the two of them to visit Italy and make a film about the event and explore the strange coincidence. They also shot some of the scenes in Boston’s North End.
Premiering in Italy at the Ferrara Film Festival in 2023 with Italian subtitles, “Radici” was well-received by the locals. In the U.S., it was screened at Film Fest LA Live and Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival in California in 2024 and then on the East Coast.
“It’s hard to explain how grateful I am to have collaborated on this film with my son, Clenét,” Peg said. “He means the world to me and I love him more than words can say. I also respect him as the talented creative auteur he is and am in awe of his ability to create stories artistically with extraordinary skills and, yes, professional experience.”
—By Madison Morin ’24