France’s Les Movies du Losange is winning worldwide sales outside Italy with “Sicilian Letters” (“Iddu”), the much-anticipated drama about Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro – who was nicknamed “the last godfather” – directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (“Sicilian Ghost Story”).
“Sicilian Letters” pairs two prominent Italian actors — Elio Germano, who plays Messina (see opening photo above) and Toni Servillo (opening photo below) as his antagonist Catello, a shadowy secret service agent — working together for prime time. The title refers to a surreptitious correspondence between them using “pizzini,” the small pieces of paper that the Sicilian Mafia uses for high-level communications.
Giulia Parlato/Courtesy Indigo Movie
The film — set for release on the fall competition circuit — appears to be set in time during Denaro’s three decades as a fugitive from Italian justice, when he was at the height of his nefarious powers. After being on the run for three decades, Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January 2023 in front of a luxury medical center in Palermo, where he had been present for cancer treatment for a year under a false identity. The top mobster, convicted of masterminding some of Italy’s most heinous murders – including the murders of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – later died in September 2023 in a maximum security prison.
In their first interview about “Sicilian Letters,” the administrators stated that they had been researching Messina Denaro before the Mafiosi’s arrest. They described Messina Denaro as an unknown figure “whose importance has long been underestimated,” and noted that, compared to other Cosa Nostra bosses, he had very different characteristics. While they were tracing the boss through court documents, they discovered that in 2004, an attempt was made by Italian secret agents to arrest him by recruiting a former local politician who had been imprisoned for Mafia ties to start a clandestine correspondence with him. After a few years, Messina Denaro felt he was being betrayed and disappeared. The administrators described his correspondence as a “dance between the world that tries to border Matteo and the world within which he hides.”
As for Messina Denaro’s distinction, administrators stated that as a fugitive he followed current events, had a passion for films and TV series and was also quite cultured. In his hiding place, police found “tons of DVDs, including several Antonioni and Coppola films and the entire first season of ‘Sex and the City,’” as well as many novels, some of which were quite intellectual. Administrators also noted that although he was forced to be a recluse, Messina Denaro enjoyed socializing and was “always surrounded by the Sicilian bourgeoisie,” which actually made him stand out “in comparison to other bosses.” So in portraying this character “we start from there,” they noted.
“Sicilian Letters” marks Grassadonia and Piazza’s third role after “Salvo,” a mob hitman who falls in love with his target’s blind sister, and “Sicilian Ghost Story,” another unconventional mob film that combines tropes from fairy tales with the harsh reality of a mob kidnapping. “Sicilian Ghost Story” opened Cannes Critics’ Week in 2017 and was released by Strand Release in the U.S. after winning the Italian David di Donatello Award for best bespoke screenplay in 2018.
When it comes to tone, the film is “undoubtedly not a biopic,” the directors said, adding that they referenced the work of the late great Italian political drama expert Elio Petri (“Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion”) and equally infused “Siciliano Cartas” with a strong component of ridicule because “the world that revolves around this character is a ridiculous world”.
In addition to Germano and Servillo, the cast of “Sicilian Letters” also includes Daniela Marra (“Exterior, Night”), Barbora Bobulova (“A Brighter Tomorrow”) and Tommaso Ragno (“Nostalgia”). The director of photography is Luca Bigazzi (“The Great Beauty”), the lens expert they previously worked with on “Sicilian Ghost Story”.
The film’s original music is composed by Sicilian singer-songwriter Colapesce, whose soundtrack is “inspired by Italian soundtracks of the 1960s, specifically films by Petri and Pietro Germi (“Divorce, Italian Model”) and helped the directors discover the definitive narrative form of the film. , they stated.
“Sicilian Letters” is an Italian-French co-production between Indigo Movie (“The Great Beauty”), RAI Cinema and Les Movies du Losange, which will release it in France. RAI Cinema Distribution 01 will release the film in Italy.
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