So I was reading Giorgio Locatelli's excellent 'Made in Sicily', which is not just about food but the wider culture of the land, and he referred to John Dickie's study of the Mafia there, 'Cosa Nostra' so naturally I had to read that too, and in it was the story of Peppino Impastato, a sort of folk hero who stood up to the Mafia, and was murdered, and I thought 'Wow! That would make a great film!' and two pages later I read that it had been made into a great film, which won the Silver Bear at Venice, and was called I Cento Passi, and was only sat there on our (large) shelf of unwatched DVDs (bought because of being a big fan of the director, who made possibly the best film in the Italian language, the six hour La Meglio Gioventu, as well as Quando Sei Nato non puoi piu Nasdconderti and Sangue Pazzo, all which need re-watching). (In fact I also realise that we own another of his films, Romanzo di Una Strage, which we also have never watched!)
Anyway, the story is beautifully told here by Claudio Fava, Monica Zapelli, Vanda Vaz and the director, with a charismatic central performance by Luigi Lo Cascio (also La Meglio Gioventu). All the acting is good: Luigi Maria Burruano, Lucia Sardo, Paolo Briguglia, Tony Spernadeo, Andrea Tidona (sympathetic Communist).
Photographed by Roberto Forza, edited by Roberto Missiroli, music from Giovanni Sollima. The English subtitles were amusingly bad. ('Picciriddu', I later learned, means 'kid' in Sicilian.)
The murder was quite covered up for a long time, then finally in 2002 (after the film was released) 'Tano' Badalamenti was convicted of ordering the execution, and given a life sentence, following campaigning by his mother and brother (the father was killed in a hit-and-run which the family believe was also murder).
In his gutsy attitude, Peppino reminded me of Charlie Hebdo's 'Charb' (Stephane Charbonnier).
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