20 Sigarette

Here’s something different; director Aureliano Amadei’s autobiographical experience in Iraq is an Italian action movie, with blood, bombs, and explosions. You don’t see that everyday.

20 Sigarette is Amadei’s story and his movie is about his tragically short stint as an assistant director on a film shot in Iraq in 2003, so short that he hadn’t even finished his 20th cigarette when a suicide bomber smashed the gates of the military compound he was staying at and killed nearly everyone but him.

This extremely realistic drama is still all-Italian in nature; it’s exciting, but also tender, heartbreaking, and even funny in a very goofy way that may seem out of context on paper but works well. It’s a war movie, but it’s the story of a draft-dodging half-ass who finds himself in the middle of a war zone and how it changes him.

Amadei’s escorts have barely finished explaining to him that Italian citizens don’t have any idea what is going on over there when their jeep comes under fire. The soldiers tell him it’s probably just a wedding, with people firing into the air, but Amadei doesn’t buy it. He’s on the phone with his Mom a half hour later telling her that he’s scared. He’s left Italy expecting a calmed down Iraq, but quickly realizes he’s been misinformed, arriving just in time for the graphically recreated bombing that kills civilians, including a child, 17 Italian soldiers and military police, and two civilians, including Amadei’s boss, the director of the film he’d come to work. Amadei is hurt but survives and in pain with a shattered ankle and covered with blood, is thrown into the back of a truck with the body of a dead child.

Back in Rome, his surreal experience has only just begun, with military personnel misrepresenting the facts of the event, a soldier taking undo credit for saving him, and funerals overshadowed by politics. But in typical Italian style, Amadei can’t leave out the life affirming stuff, with his parents, the parents of a dead soldier, and the love of his life at his bedside, reminding him of the preciousness of his life.

20 Sigarette won the controcampo award at the 2011 Venice Film Festival and deserved it. It stars Vinicio Marchioni and Carolina Crescentini.

Director: Aureliano Amadei
Writers: Aureliano Amadei, Francesco Trento
Stars: Vinicio Marchioni, Carolina Crescentini, Giorgio Colangeli

2010 – 94 minutes