Sabine Timoteo, Julia Jedlikowska, Gaetano Fernandez
Based on the chilling real-life Mafia abduction of 12-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo in 1993, Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia’s Sicilian Ghost Story – which screened in Critics’ Week at Cannes 2018 – is a dark fairy tale of teenage romance set in a small Sicilian village at the edge of a forest.
Teenage Luna has a crush on her classmate Giuseppe, the son of a man with Mafia connections who has turned informer. One day, when Giuseppe vanishes, Luna refuses to sweep his mysterious disappearance under the rug and is determined to find her friend despite no-one wanting to talk.
A near-mythological tale of adolescent innocence and painful reality, the film revolves around its determined protagonist Luna who refuses to give up her search and rebels admiringly against the code of silence, fear and collusion that surrounds her small Sicilian town. By letting what could be a traditional mafia story unfold in the curious space between reality and ghostly fantasy, Piazza and Grassadonia deepen its intensity, meaning and mystery.
