RTL Today – Film about Venice: Sicilian mafia boss on the run

The Mafia is making a big presence at this year’s Venice Film Festival, with a film inspired by boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who died last year after being on the run for 30 years.

That long period as a fugitive, with the help of family, loyalists and probably even more powerful political forces, is “a dark page in the history of Italy,” said Fabio Grassadonia, who co-directed with director Antonio Piazza “Sicilian Letters,” which premiered at the festival on Thursday.

The two Sicilian filmmakers told AFP they wanted to understand how Messina Denaro was able to live and operate underground for so long before he was arrested in January 2023 and died of cancer in prison in September.

“These reasons are not only related to the intelligence or skills of the fugitive, but are deeply rooted in the system that revolves around him, in the system of the little ones who help him, but also in the strong forces that supported him,” Grassadonia said.

Messina Denaro was one of the most ruthless bosses in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate from the “Godfather” films.

The 61-year-old was convicted of involvement in the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992 and of deadly bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993. One of his six life sentences was for the kidnapping and murder of the 12-year-old son of a witness in the Falcone case.

He disappeared in the summer of 1993 during a campaign by the Italian state against the Sicilian Mafia. He remained at the top of the most wanted list in Italy, but gradually became a legendary figure.

It was his decision to seek treatment for colon cancer that led to his arrest on January 16, 2023, during a visit to a clinic in Palermo.

According to the directors, Italy cannot turn its back on the mafia until the country is honest about its past.

“It is a country that has not yet told the truth about this criminal phenomenon,” Grassadonia said.

“And until the truth comes out, we will keep going around the same things, we will keep repeating a past that never ends and that becomes the present…” he said.

But that search for the truth is overshadowed by the enormous financial power of the mafia.

The “billions of euros supporting the economy” make it “difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish where the clean economy begins and where the dirty one ends,” Grassadonia told AFP.

– ‘Swamp’ –

In the film, the main character Matteo (played by Elio Germano) continues to run the mafia’s affairs from his hideout in the apartment.

He communicates with his family and accomplices through the so-called ‘pizzini’ network. These are messages that he writes on pieces of paper to secure communication between him and his environment. After they are read, he burns them.

Catello, an intelligent ex-politician and school principal of questionable morals, reluctantly helps the police arrest Matteo. He is played by Toni Servillo, the star of Paolo Sorrentino’s 2013 film “The Great Beauty.”

Grassadonia said Servillo’s character is “undoubtedly an amoral figure,” but that his morality is “more ‘sunny’ than the dark and black Matteo.”

The directors hoped to illuminate “a certain Italian socio-cultural fabric” through the interaction between the two characters.

It is the director’s third film about the mafia.

“We wanted to talk about the swamp we’re stuck in,” Piazza said.

“We have to try to keep telling this, otherwise we will have a phenomenon of repression,” he said. “That will not help the country move forward.”

“We are confident because we are convinced that, just like us, there are still other people, even in other fields, who are constantly trying to talk, ask questions and look for answers,” he said.

“There are still too many questions that either had no answers or were too simple to be true.”