Toni Servillo, who played Roman socialite Jep Gambardella in Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning “The Great Beauty,” will star in a drama about Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro, dubbed “the last godfather” directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (“Sicilian Ghost Story”).
Also starring in the hotly-anticipated drama titled “Iddu” – which means “Him” in Sicilian dialect – is Italian A-list actor Elio Germano, winner of a Cannes best actor prize for Daniele Luchetti’s “Our Life” in 2010 and more recently of Italy’s 2021 David di Donatello Award for Giorgio Diritti’s “Hidden Away.”
The roles respectively being played by Servillo and Elio Germano are being kept under wraps.
After being on the run for three decades, Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January 2023 outside an upscale medical facility in Palermo, where he had been undergoing cancer treatment for a year under false identity. The top mafioso, convicted of masterminding some of Italy...
Also starring in the hotly-anticipated drama titled “Iddu” – which means “Him” in Sicilian dialect – is Italian A-list actor Elio Germano, winner of a Cannes best actor prize for Daniele Luchetti’s “Our Life” in 2010 and more recently of Italy’s 2021 David di Donatello Award for Giorgio Diritti’s “Hidden Away.”
The roles respectively being played by Servillo and Elio Germano are being kept under wraps.
After being on the run for three decades, Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January 2023 outside an upscale medical facility in Palermo, where he had been undergoing cancer treatment for a year under false identity. The top mafioso, convicted of masterminding some of Italy...
- 1/18/2024
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
The story of Italy’s most-wanted Mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, whose recent arrest by police in Palermo after 30 years on the run made global headlines, is set to become a big-budget film.
Rome-based producer Marco Belardi (“Perfect Strangers”) has acquired rights to ace anti-Mafia journalist Lirio Abbate’s book about the Cosa Nostra boss. The book is titled “U Siccu,” which is Sicilian dialect that translates as “The Skinny One.”
Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January by dozens of police officers outside an upscale medical facility in Palermo where he had been undergoing cancer treatment for a year under false identity.
Belardi’s company Bamboo Productions has announced plans for the tale of this elusive top mafioso, convicted of masterminding some of Italy’s most heinous slayings – including the killings of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and the grisly murder of a Mafia turncoat’s young son, who...
Rome-based producer Marco Belardi (“Perfect Strangers”) has acquired rights to ace anti-Mafia journalist Lirio Abbate’s book about the Cosa Nostra boss. The book is titled “U Siccu,” which is Sicilian dialect that translates as “The Skinny One.”
Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January by dozens of police officers outside an upscale medical facility in Palermo where he had been undergoing cancer treatment for a year under false identity.
Belardi’s company Bamboo Productions has announced plans for the tale of this elusive top mafioso, convicted of masterminding some of Italy’s most heinous slayings – including the killings of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and the grisly murder of a Mafia turncoat’s young son, who...
- 2/23/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
So, you finally got around to watching (probably streaming) The Irishman? And you’re ready for another hit (not the “murder” kind) of mob movie epic-ness. Then here’s a flick that takes us back to where “it all began”, the “old country” of Sicily (and it’s boot-shaped neighbor Italy). And, like that other flick, it’s a true story, though the authenticity of Scorsese’s work has been questioned. But, no this one’s legit, a word we don’t usually associate with the “organization”. Like the Godfather trilogy, and the former film it spans several decades, although it clocks in at an hour or so less running time than the story of the “house painter”. Unlike him, this story’s main character worked with the feds, spilling the beans (maybe pasta instead). That’s why he was referred to in “certain circles” as The Traitor.
The tale...
The tale...
- 2/21/2020
- by Jim Batts
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Sony Pictures Classics has set a release date for Marco Bellochio’s The Traitor, which is the official entry from Italy for the International Feature Film Oscar. The film stars Pierfrancesco Favino and opened on May 23 in Italy and will now be released stateside in New York and Los Angeles on January 31, 2020.
The Traitor is based on the true story of Tommaso Buscetta, the man who brought down the Cosa Nostra. In the early 80s, an all-out war rages between Sicilian mafia bosses over the heroin trade. Buscetta, a made man, flees to hide out in Brazil. Back home, scores are being settled and Buscetta watches from afar as his sons and brother are killed in Palermo, knowing he may be next. Arrested and extradited to Italy by the Brazilian police, Buscetta makes a decision that will change everything for the Mafia: he decides to meet with Judge Giovanni Falcone...
The Traitor is based on the true story of Tommaso Buscetta, the man who brought down the Cosa Nostra. In the early 80s, an all-out war rages between Sicilian mafia bosses over the heroin trade. Buscetta, a made man, flees to hide out in Brazil. Back home, scores are being settled and Buscetta watches from afar as his sons and brother are killed in Palermo, knowing he may be next. Arrested and extradited to Italy by the Brazilian police, Buscetta makes a decision that will change everything for the Mafia: he decides to meet with Judge Giovanni Falcone...
- 10/1/2019
- by Dino-Ray Ramos
- Deadline Film + TV
Crime drama opened in Italy in May.
Sony Pictures Classics (Spc) will release Marco Bellocchio’s Italian best international feature film Oscar submission The Traitor on January 31, 2020.
The Traitor premiered in Cannes and stars Pierfrancesco Favino as Tommaso Buscetta, a mobster who fled to Brazil and watched the mafia wars from afar.
After Buscetta was extradited to Italy, he met Judge Giovanni Falcone and betrayed the eternal vow he made to the Cosa Nostra. The Traitor was released in Italy on May 23.
Bellocchio and Favino will present a screening at New York Film Festival on October 6 - its first major...
Sony Pictures Classics (Spc) will release Marco Bellocchio’s Italian best international feature film Oscar submission The Traitor on January 31, 2020.
The Traitor premiered in Cannes and stars Pierfrancesco Favino as Tommaso Buscetta, a mobster who fled to Brazil and watched the mafia wars from afar.
After Buscetta was extradited to Italy, he met Judge Giovanni Falcone and betrayed the eternal vow he made to the Cosa Nostra. The Traitor was released in Italy on May 23.
Bellocchio and Favino will present a screening at New York Film Festival on October 6 - its first major...
- 10/1/2019
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
Crime drama opened in Italy in May.
Sony Pictures Classics (Spc) will release Marco Bellocchio’s Italian best international feature film Oscar submission The Traitor on January 31, 2020.
The Traitor premiered in Cannes and stars Pierfrancesco Favino as Tommaso Buscetta, a mobster who fled to Brazil and watched the mafia wars from afar.
After Buscetta was extradited to Italy, he met Judge Giovanni Falcone and betrayed the eternal vow he made to the Cosa Nostra. The Traitor was released in Italy on May 23.
Bellocchio and Favino will present a screening at New York Film Festival on October 6 - its first major...
Sony Pictures Classics (Spc) will release Marco Bellocchio’s Italian best international feature film Oscar submission The Traitor on January 31, 2020.
The Traitor premiered in Cannes and stars Pierfrancesco Favino as Tommaso Buscetta, a mobster who fled to Brazil and watched the mafia wars from afar.
After Buscetta was extradited to Italy, he met Judge Giovanni Falcone and betrayed the eternal vow he made to the Cosa Nostra. The Traitor was released in Italy on May 23.
Bellocchio and Favino will present a screening at New York Film Festival on October 6 - its first major...
- 10/1/2019
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
For decades Marco Bellocchio has been making films dealing with important moments of Italian history, most successfully with Good Morning, Night, his look at the Aldo Moro kidnapping by the Red Brigade, and Vincere, about Mussolini. He’s back in Cannes with a film in competition, this time looking at the maxi Mafia trials of the 1990s, which led to a slew of convictions, in part thanks to the traitor of the title, ex-Cosa Nostra ‘soldier’ turned state witness Tommaso Buscetta.
Buscetta is played by the extremely watchable Pierfrancesco Favino, whose portrayal of this don is both highly credible and somewhat disturbing. The latter is not due to Favino’s performance, which is one of his best, but to the director’s choice to depict Buscetta as a man of honour. Instances of Buscetta’s past are glimpsed throughout the film, but there is little evidence of what this man...
Buscetta is played by the extremely watchable Pierfrancesco Favino, whose portrayal of this don is both highly credible and somewhat disturbing. The latter is not due to Favino’s performance, which is one of his best, but to the director’s choice to depict Buscetta as a man of honour. Instances of Buscetta’s past are glimpsed throughout the film, but there is little evidence of what this man...
- 5/28/2019
- by Jo-Ann Titmarsh
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
The old dictum “context is key” never felt truer than it did when Marco Bellocchio’s “The Traitor” made its world premiere on Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival.
As the first screening came to close, members of the Italian press greeted the film with effusive cheers, and that response left many of their international counterparts somewhat confused — or maybe just jealous — about what hint of genius they saw in this sturdy if somewhat uninspiring Mafia biopic.
Well, one caveat there: As Tommaso Buscetta, the real-life turncoat who helped put 366 different Mafiosi in jail, actor Pierfrancesco Favino really does bring the goods, delivering an exquisite movie-star turn as a godfather whose cocksure magnetism can’t quite hide the pain in his eyes.
Also Read: 'Oh Mercy' Film Review: Is This Cop Drama a Pilot In Disguise?
In an unusually strong year for male leads, Favino could easily take the festival...
As the first screening came to close, members of the Italian press greeted the film with effusive cheers, and that response left many of their international counterparts somewhat confused — or maybe just jealous — about what hint of genius they saw in this sturdy if somewhat uninspiring Mafia biopic.
Well, one caveat there: As Tommaso Buscetta, the real-life turncoat who helped put 366 different Mafiosi in jail, actor Pierfrancesco Favino really does bring the goods, delivering an exquisite movie-star turn as a godfather whose cocksure magnetism can’t quite hide the pain in his eyes.
Also Read: 'Oh Mercy' Film Review: Is This Cop Drama a Pilot In Disguise?
In an unusually strong year for male leads, Favino could easily take the festival...
- 5/23/2019
- by Ben Croll
- The Wrap
“I wasn’t a real person,” Letizia Battaglia says of the days before she took to photography. As an unhappily married housewife stifled and abused by Italy’s dominant patriarchy, picking up a camera opened up her life to realms she’d never otherwise have accessed; as a photojournalist specializing in the crimes and rituals of the Cosa Nostra in her hometown of Palermo, she turned her personal vocation into boundary-breaking activism. It’s easy to see why Kim Longinotto, herself one of Britain’s trailblazing female documentarians, would warm to Battaglia’s story. Palpable affection for her subject permeates the otherwise plain, brisk framework of “Shooting the Mafia,” a potted chronicle of Battaglia’s life and career.
Oddly, that apparent artistic empathy hasn’t made for one of Longinotto’s more essential works. Hampered by an interviewee who seems genial but unwilling to give much of herself away, it...
Oddly, that apparent artistic empathy hasn’t made for one of Longinotto’s more essential works. Hampered by an interviewee who seems genial but unwilling to give much of herself away, it...
- 2/6/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Compelling if messily constructed, Kim Longinotto’s Shooting the Mafia tells the story of 83-year-old photographer Letizia Batteglia who took on the Sicilian mafia in graphic detail thanks to brave editors at her left-wing leaning newspaper L’Ora. Spending much of her professional life focused on the sheer brutality, including nightly public murders in Palermo, Sicily–an otherwise beautiful city–she no longer decides she can stand by as a neutral documentarian and later enters politics.
Confronting the costs of the mafia’s operations from the 1970s to the present day, she perseveres with a long memory as the world eventually comes crashing down on the mafia and its internal war becomes external. On screen, she heartbreakingly details her graphic works and a crisis of faith after the mafia enjoys a brief win following the assassination of Giovanni Falcone, a judge whom Batteglia was fond of. He was the one...
Confronting the costs of the mafia’s operations from the 1970s to the present day, she perseveres with a long memory as the world eventually comes crashing down on the mafia and its internal war becomes external. On screen, she heartbreakingly details her graphic works and a crisis of faith after the mafia enjoys a brief win following the assassination of Giovanni Falcone, a judge whom Batteglia was fond of. He was the one...
- 2/4/2019
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
Brazilian actress and model Maria Fernanda Candido is to play the female lead in veteran Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio’s “The Traitor,” a biopic of Tommaso Buscetta, the first high-ranking member of Cosa Nostra to break the Sicilian Mafia’s oath of silence.
Candido, who most recently starred in Rede Globo’s popular prime-time soap “Edge of Desire,” will play Buscetta’s third wife, Maria Cristina de Almeida Guimaraes, the daughter of an upper-crust Brazilian lawyer. She played an important part in her husband’s decision in 1984 to start cooperating with Italian and, later, American prosecutors.
She is believed to have been crucial in prompting Buscetta to turn against the Corleonesi faction in the first major “betrayal” within Cosa Nostra’s high-ranks. Buscetta’s testimony about heroin smuggling in the ”pizza connection” case in the mid-1980s allowed him to obtain U.S. citizenship and a place in the witness protection program.
Candido, who most recently starred in Rede Globo’s popular prime-time soap “Edge of Desire,” will play Buscetta’s third wife, Maria Cristina de Almeida Guimaraes, the daughter of an upper-crust Brazilian lawyer. She played an important part in her husband’s decision in 1984 to start cooperating with Italian and, later, American prosecutors.
She is believed to have been crucial in prompting Buscetta to turn against the Corleonesi faction in the first major “betrayal” within Cosa Nostra’s high-ranks. Buscetta’s testimony about heroin smuggling in the ”pizza connection” case in the mid-1980s allowed him to obtain U.S. citizenship and a place in the witness protection program.
- 9/17/2018
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Rome – Canneseries competition entry “The Hunter” is being hailed as a watershed production for Italian pubcaster Rai and certainly stands out as the most innovative show among a Rai content package just picked up by Amazon Prime Video.
About a real Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi, ”The Hunter” is produced by Rome-based Cross Productions — which is controlled by Germany’s Beta Film — in tandem with Rai Fiction. The 12-episode “Hunter” skein reconstructs the vigorous reaction prompted in 1993 by the 1992 bomb murders of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. An anti-Mafia effort of unprecedented scope was unleashed that led to hundreds of arrests and marked a turning point in Italy’s fight against Cosa Nostra.
This pivotal hunt is narrated through multiple prisms but mainly through that of young and ambitious provincial prosecutor Saverio Barone, played by Francesco Montanari (“Crime Novel”). His character is...
About a real Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi, ”The Hunter” is produced by Rome-based Cross Productions — which is controlled by Germany’s Beta Film — in tandem with Rai Fiction. The 12-episode “Hunter” skein reconstructs the vigorous reaction prompted in 1993 by the 1992 bomb murders of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. An anti-Mafia effort of unprecedented scope was unleashed that led to hundreds of arrests and marked a turning point in Italy’s fight against Cosa Nostra.
This pivotal hunt is narrated through multiple prisms but mainly through that of young and ambitious provincial prosecutor Saverio Barone, played by Francesco Montanari (“Crime Novel”). His character is...
- 4/4/2018
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
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