Not just abroad. In the latest decades the cultural production of Italy has been, on average, rather embarrassing. As an Italian, I have developed an easy heuristic: if it is an Italian title (either book, song or movie, whatever) it is likely to be bad. Exceptions exist, but they are rare. It is true that what gets exported from a country is usually the best, so one probably encounters the local bad and the foreign best, but cultural production of Italy certainly was better once. It is as if my country has suffered some kind of creative collapse.