Italian Cinema Today

Canada’s annual Contemporary Italian Film Festival recently showed a riveting film that has earned success in Italy and abroad.  Inspired by true events, Salvo Cuccia’s   Lo Scambio  takes place in Palermo during the mid-90s when violent organized crime was at its peak. The film centers on a husband and wife in their mid-40s. He is a police commissioner consumed by his work and she longs for a child, becoming obsessed with the story of a boy who was kidnapped by the mafia in retaliation for his father becoming an informant.  Cuccia presents the story of the commissioner’s work and the never-ending, lonely days of his wife in parallel sequences of delusion and stark reality. Cuccia said of this surreal style,  “I wanted to make a movie about a crime that really happened, but that was more than just the account of a news report of the time. I was interested in exploring the nature of the characters and the situations in order to bring out a drama that stoo...

She’s just in her mid-20’s but actress Sara Serraiocco has quickly become one of Italy’s leading ladies. Born in the region of Abruzzo in 1990, Serraiocco got her start performing as a dancer. At the age of 20, she set her sights on acting, and moved to Rome to study her craft at the legendary Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Just three years later, she made her feature film debut in Salvo , Fabio Grassadonia’s and Antonio Piazza’s dark tale of a hit man who falls for his rival’s blind sister. The film is complex with little dialogue, but strong, powerful silences. The role of Rita proved that Serraiocco was born to be a performer. Her subtle but powerful expressions and mannerisms heightened the suspense of the film when the scenes were carried solely and silently by the young actress. Salvo is a story of hope for the hopeless, a last shot at love, if only in the final breath of life. Salvo Mancuso, played by Saleh Bakri, is a hit man, a hired assassin. After killing his...