Director: Jonas Carpignano With: Pio Amato, Koudous Seihon, Iolanda Amato, Damiano Amato, Francesco Pio Amato, Patrizia Amato, Rocco Amato, Susanna Amato. (Italian dialogue) Official Site: Neo-realism isn’t necessarily a genre built for star turns, but director happened upon one anyway in his debut “Mediterranea”: Then-preteen Pio Amato wasn’t the lead in that accomplished, affecting refugee drama, but his spiky, wily turn as a Romani artful dodger in the Calabrian coastal town of Gioia Tauro was a bright, skittering firework in its margins. It comes as no surprise, then, that Carpignano has placed Pio center-stage for his similarly empathetic follow-up “,” weaving the charismatic kid’s tough coming-of-age narrative into a broader study of poverty and racial prejudice on the fringes of Italian society. With the presence of Martin Scorsese as an executive producer, this polished semi-sequel to “Mediterranea” — which extends the narratives of certain characters from that film, but is otherwise a freestanding work — will doubtless boost Carpignano’s already fast-rising profile on the festival and arthouse circuit. Creatively speaking, however, “” is something of a step sideways for the Italian-American filmmaker, consolidating his considerable formal and observational gifts while fumbling a bit as storytelling. Overlong and oddly over-plotted as it chronicles the unsurprising escalation of its young protagonist’s life of crime, it counts on every ounce of Pio’s darting energy to see audiences through its less electric passages. More Reviews As in “Mediterranea,” Carpignano adopts a documentarian’s gaze within a fictional framework.
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March 2018
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