/ Director
Roberto Faenza
/ Cast
Luca Zingaretti, Alessia Goria, Corrado Fortuna, Giovanna Bozzolo, Francesco Foti, Piero Nicosia
/ Length
90 min.
/ Year
2005
/ Sponsor
San Diego Italian Film Festival
Date :: Thursday, July 15
Time :: 7:00 PM
Location :: MoPA, Balboa Park
Cost :: $5 Suggested Donation
Language :: Italian with English subtitles
Alla Luce del Sole
By the Light of Day
Roberto Faenza similarly brings attention to the life of an apparently minor figure in his 2005 film about the priest Don Giuseppe Puglisi. Working in the town of Brancaccio, Don Puglisi made it a task to open the church to young boys and men to offer an alternative to what awaited them if they continued to live life without hope. By opening the doors of his church as a sanctuary, Don Puglisi challenged the dominance of the Mafia and the only resource for the town’s youth. He in fact reduced the pool of recruits available to the mobsters. Omertà, the long-standing law of silence that has enabled the Mafia to rule through fear and distrust, contributed to frustrate the priest’s progress, even as he demonstrated his commitment to the life of his parishioners by putting his life on the line. With this film, Roberto Faenza continues to contribute to a long and growing line of films that put the Mafia and other organized crime groups alla luce del sole (in the light of the sun), in the right context for everyone to begin to understand their impact on everyday lives.
In closing, I would like to mention a film that was very well received by critics and the public alike, Il Divo (2008) by Paolo Sorrentino. This film, through satire, surrealism, reconstructions, humor and historical fact sheds light on another important character in Italian history over the last sixty years, Giulio Andreotti. As a main player in Italian politics since its first post-WWII government, a seven-time prime minister, ex-minister of the interior, exterior, culture and so on, Andreotti had a hand in every major event in Italian life. From his famous Andreotti Law of the 50s, by which he devised an “official” way of limiting what he thought was a negative view of Italy that film makers such as De Sica were projecting, to his alleged involvement in the Aldo Moro affair, to his alleged Mafia connections, Andreotti has/is an indelible presence on the Italian landscape. Il Divo is in many ways the portrait of a man whose way of wielding political power is akin to the quiet, restrained and controlled figure of Don Corleone in the Godfather, as such it serves as a linchpin in understanding at least some of the connections that continue to condition and influence the role of the Mafia in Italian society.
The recent publication of Roberto Saviano’s book Gomorra (2006), and Matteo Garrone’s 2008 film version by the same name, represent a milepost of sorts in the long struggle against organized crime in Italy. Criminal organizations such as the Camorra, the ‘ndrangheta and the Mafia have long been a blight on Italian society. The mistaken notion that their violence was internal to their organizations and that “good people” who were not involved were most likely never to have to come face to face with that reality has repeatedly been broken by highly visible and impactful incidents. Saviano based his book on actual Judicial records not merely to reveal single crimes and their perpetrators but to point out the insidious nature of criminal organizations and a whole series of connections by which the Camorra, like the Mafia and ‘ndrangheta, has infiltrated every aspect of private and public life.
The films in this “Anti-Mafia Mini-series” presented by the San Diego Italian Film Festival testify to the long-standing struggle against organized crime. La Scorta (1993), I Cento Passi (2000) and Alla Luce del Sole (2005) form part of a subgenre of Italian cinema that has come to be labeled "political film". The Neapolitan film-maker Francesco Rosi is acknowledged as one of the fathers of the genre, having made among others Hands Over the City (1963), The Mattei Affair (1972) and Salvatore Giuliano (1974) all of which in some way explored the extent of corruption in the Italian political milieu and its collusion with organized criminality. More recent films, such as the ones in our series, and Alessandro Di Robilant’s Il giudice ragazzino (1994), Pasquale Scimeca’s Placido Rizzotto (2000) and Marco Amenta’s La siciliana ribelle (2009) have also joined the ranks of the political film genre with what can more accurately be termed anti-mafia films.
One particularly important trait of these films is that they make known the names and stories of ordinary, every-day people in their struggle against organized crime.
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