Cinema in the birthplace of mafia boss in Sicily refuses to show film about his life | Italy

The owner of the only cinema in Castelvetrano, the Sicilian birthplace of infamous Cosa Nostra mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, has refused to screen a film based on his life.

Denaro died of cancer last September, nine months after he was arrested after 30 years on the run.

The highly fictionalized film Sicilian Letters premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will be released in Italian cinemas on October 10.

Salvatore Vaccarino, the owner of the Marconi cinema in Castelvetrano, refused to organize a preview and show the film, the Giornale di Sicilia reported. “It doesn’t interest me, it doesn’t concern me,” Vaccarino told the newspaper.

He is the son of the late former mayor Antonio Vaccarino, who was convicted of drug trafficking in the 1990s and is known for corresponding with Denaro on behalf of the Italian secret services when they tried to capture him. Sicilian letters is based on correspondence.

News agency Ansa quoted sources as saying that one of the reasons why Vaccarino would not show the film could be the reference to his father. Others said that sympathy for Denaro ran deep in Castelvetrano and that the film portrayed him in a negative light.

Giovanni Lentini, the mayor of Castelvetrano, said he would try to persuade Vaccarino to show the film “so that citizens have the opportunity to see it.”

Denaro was one of Italy’s most wanted men until he was arrested in January 2023 at a clinic in Palermo, where he was receiving cancer treatment. He was given a life sentence in 2002 for crimes including involvement in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He once bragged that he could “fill a cemetery” with his victims.

While on the run, Denaro maintained his lavish lifestyle thanks to several bankrollers, including, according to prosecutors, politicians and businessmen. In the months before his arrest, he lived in a modest apartment in Campobello di Mazara in the Sicilian province of Trapani.

Elio Germano plays the gangster in the film, which also stars Toni Servillo, who starred in Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning film The Great Beauty.