There is no place in Italy as beautiful and as filled with diverse culture as the southern Italian island of Sicily. And yet no place has been abused more — by wars, invasions and more recently, pollution — the latter pointed out hauntingly by filmmakers François-Xavier Destors and Alfonso Pinto in their impressive ode to this modern “wasteland.”
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A Woman, armed with courage and her camera: 'Shooting the Mafia' by Kim Longinotto
Letizia Battaglia, her last name not incidentally means “battle,” has been a one-woman army fighting that decline. Through her photographs of the Mafia and the destruction it caused in her home city of Palermo — courageous because each one could have meant her death by execution, if only for having captured the soul of the unworthy, or the wrong moment in time — Battaglia has shown the world what courage, resilience and being Italian really does mean, at its highest form.
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Julia Jedikowska in a still from 'Sicilian Ghost Story' by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia
Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia on 'Sicilian Ghost Story': "It’s only this idea about love defeating all that let us do the film."
There is nothing more savage in this world than violence perpetrated against a child. The inhumanity of striking a little girl, the cruelty of inflicting pain of any kind on a boy, those are undeniably the darkest moments for mankind.
It is within the realm of one such unbearable acts that ‘Sicilian Ghost Story’ takes place. Yet Antonio Piazza’s and Fabio Grassadonia’s follow up to their award winning, masterful ‘Salvo’ is a fantastical love story first, and a fact-inspired cautionary tale of violence second. And with those two impossible companions, love and violence, walking hand in hand, Piazza and Grassadonia have created a masterpiece.
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