The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used to Be

La Mafia non é più quella di una volta
dir. Franco Maresco/Italy/2019/105 min.

In 2017, 25 years after the massacres in Capaci and via D’Amelio, where the Antimafia’s heroes, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, lost their lives, Franco Maresco decides to make a new film. Following Letizia Battaglia – the 84-year-old photographer who witnessed with her shoots the “Mafia Wars” and one of the “11 women who have marked our time” according to the New York Times; also guest of our festival in 2019 – Maresco found the inspiration for an impressive, deeply political, satirical film which wittily depicts the contradictions within one country.

In order to present such contradictions, the director needed to place Letizia next to an opposite figure: Ciccio Mira, the leading protagonist in 2014’s Belluscone. Una storia siciliana. “Legendary” manager of street parties, capable of inspiring a particular “empathy” in spite of his nostalgic ideas of the Mafia as it used to be, Mira has changed over these few years, and now he seems to seek redemption, as a man and as a manager. But the leopard cannot change its spots. He “takes care” of a new pupil, the young Cristian Miscel, often subject to psychotic episodes, especially when his mother and his impresario cannot guarantee his time on stage. Mira wants to organize a unique event at ZEN (the most degraded neighborhood in Palermo) “I neomelodici per Falcone e Borsellino” (The neomelodics for Falcone and Borsellino), on the occasion of the celebrations commemorating the two martyrs killed by the Mafia... While attending the celebrations of the Antimafia’s martyrs, Maresco’s disenchantment is confronted with the passion of Battaglia.

READ MORE
HIDE

  • projection time:
    105 min.
  • country/year:
    Italy /2019
  • director:
    Franco Maresco
  • pictures:
    Tommaso Lusena de Sarmiento
  • production:
    Rean Mazzone / Ila Palma, Dream Film, Tramp Limited
  • awards :
    2019 – IFF Venice: Special Jury Prize

Inne filmy z sekcji

Places

Gdy opadnie pył
Ulica Gentryfikacji 1
W kręgu
Inne filmy z tagiem

politics

Anioły z Diamond Street
Vivos
Wyabstrahowana / rodzina
Inne filmy z konkursu

Audience Award

Wyrzutki
Wakacje z bronią
Kwiaty dwóch Korei
 
Doc shop
Buy our films on DVD
NEWSLETTER
Sign up and stay up to date

To optimize the content available on our website and to adjust it to your unique needs, we use the information stored in cookie files on the users devices. The user can control cookie files with the settings of his or her internet browser. Further use of our website without changing browser settings means that the user accepts the use of cookie files. Read more in: Privacy Policy

OK