The 2003 Io Non Ho Paura – I’m Not Scared – is a crime story told through the eyes of a child, a Grimm’s fairy tale for the modern age. In it, a young boy, Filippo, discovers that his parents and the other adults in his world have done something really terrible; they’ve kidnapped a child and are holding him for ransom in a dark, desolate hole that Filippo finds by accident. Everything about this movie feels like a bad childhood memory, from the picture book landscapes of wheat fields and rolling hills to the actual perspective, having been shot with a lowered lens, at a child’s level.
Filippo loves his parents but understands something that we always knew when we were little but kids don’t seem to get anymore – parents can’t always fix things and don’t need to know everything you’re up to. With his limited understanding of the world, Filippo quickly surmises that a ) if there is something to be done about this, he was going to have to do it himself, and b) telling his parents about his discovery would be a mistake.
There are no big stars in this movie but the acting is natural and the director is Gabriele Salvatores, who won the foreign language Oscar for Mediterraneo in 1991.
Read what I wrote about it HERE.
Enjoy the trailer.
I Love Italian Everything 