France’s Les Films du Losange is taking worldwide gross sales outdoors Italy on “Sicilian Letters” (“Iddu”), the hotly anticipated drama about Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro – who was dubbed “the last godfather” – directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (“Sicilian Ghost Story”).
“Sicilian Letters” pairs two prime Italian actors — Elio Germano, who performs Messina (see first-look picture above) and Toni Servillo (first-look picture under) as his antagonist Catello, a shady secret companies operative — working in tandem for the primary time. The title refers to a surreptitious correspondence between them utilizing “pizzini,” the small slips of paper that the Sicilian Mafia makes use of for high-level communications.
Giulia Parlato/Courtesy Indigo Film
The movie – which is predicted to launch on the autumn competition circuit – appears at a time throughout Denaro’s three many years as a fugitive from Italian justice, when he was on the peak of his nefarious powers. After being on the run for 3 many years, Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January 2023 outdoors an upscale medical facility in Palermo, the place he had been present process most cancers therapy for a 12 months beneath a false id. The prime mafioso, convicted of masterminding some of Italy’s most heinous slayings – together with the killings of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – subsequently died in September 2023 in a maximum-security jail.
In their first interview about “Sicilian Letters,” the administrators mentioned they’d been researching the determine of Messina Denaro means earlier than the mobsters’ arrest. They described Messina Denaro as an under-the-radar determine, “the significance of which was underestimated for a long time” and famous that in comparison with different Cosa Nostra bosses, he had very totally different traits. While finding out the boss from judicial paperwork, they got here throughout the truth that in 2004, an try was made by Italian secret companies to seize him by recruiting a former native politician who had been incarcerated as a consequence of Mafia ties to start a surreptitious correspondence with him. After a pair of years, Messina Denaro sensed that he was being performed and vanished. The administrators described their correspondence as a “dance between the world that tries to frame Matteo and the world within which he hides.”
As for Messina Denaro’s distinctiveness, the administrators mentioned that as a fugitive he saved up with present occasions, had a ardour for films and TV sequence, and was additionally fairly effectively learn. In his hideout, police discovered “lots of of DVDs, together with a number of Antonioni and Coppola films and the complete first season of ‘Sex and the City,’” as well as plenty of novels, some of which quite highbrow. The directors also noted that, though he was forced to be a recluse, Messina Denaro liked to socialize and was “always surrounded by Sicily’s bourgeoisie,” which actually made him stand out “compared to other bosses.” So in depicting this character “we started from there,” they famous.
“Sicilian Letters” marks Grassadonia and Piazza’s third function after “Salvo,” a couple of Mafia hitman who falls in love along with his goal’s blind sister, and “Sicilian Ghost Story,” one other non-conventional Mafia pic that blended fairytale tropes with the tough actuality of a mob kidnapping. “Sicilian Ghost Story” opened the Cannes Critics’ Week in 2017 and was launched by Strand Releasing within the U.S. after profitable Italy’s David di Donatello award for prime tailored script in 2018.
In phrases of tone, the movie “is definitely not a biopic,” the administrators mentioned, including that they referenced the work of Italy’s late nice political dramas specialist Elio Petri (“Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion”) and equally infused “Sicilian Letters” with a robust ingredient of ridicule as a result of “the world that revolves around this character is a ridiculous world.”
Besides Germano and Servillo, the “Sicilian Letters” forged additionally includes Daniela Marra (“Exterior, Night”), Barbora Bobulova (“A Brighter Tomorrow”) and Tommaso Ragno (“Nostalgia”). The cinematographer is Luca Bigazzi (“The Great Beauty”), the ace lenser whom they beforehand labored with on “Sicilian Ghost Story.”
The movie’s unique music consists by Sicilian singer-songwriter Colapesce, whose rating is “inspired by Italian soundtracks of the 1960s, in particular films by Petri and Pietro Germi (“Divorce, Italian Style”) and helped the administrators discover the movie’s definitive narrative type, they mentioned.
“Sicilian Letters” is an Italian-French coproduction between Indigo Film (“The Great Beauty”), RAI Cinema and Les Films du Losange, which is able to launch it in France. RAI Cinema’s 01 Distribution will launch the movie in Italy.