Synopsis
While playing outside one day, nine-year-old Michele discovers Filippo, who is chained to the ground at the bottom of a hole. Michele witnesses town baddie Felice nearby and suspects something bad is happening. Michele is unsure whom he should tell about his discovery, eventually spilling the beans to his closest friend. Michele's parents learn of his discovery and warn him to forget what he saw
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Cast
- Giuseppe CristianoMichele
- Dino AbbresciaPino Amitrano
- Aitana Sánchez-GijónAnna
- Diego AbatantuonoSergio
- Fabio TettaTeschio
- Riccardo ZinnaPietro
- Giulia MatturroMaria
- Antonella StefanucciAssunta
- Fabio AntonacciRemo
- Giorgio CarecciaFelice
Recommendations
- 83
Entertainment Weekly
With a taste for dark lyricism, the director delicately emphasizes the contrast between surface innocence and subterranean danger, and between grown-up secrets and boyhood bravery. - 80
Chicago Reader
This extraordinary Italian thriller is a study in contrasts: light versus dark, youth versus maturity, the playful versus the lethal. - 80
Los Angeles Times
With a graceful confidence Salvatores has made a movie in which good and evil flow into each other as easily as day and night. - 75
ReelViews
With its unique perspective on both the coming-of-age and thriller genres, the movie deserves to be seen by a wider audience than the one that normally frequents subtitled movies. - 75
Rolling Stone
In the guise of a nerve-jangling thriller, director Gabriele Salvatores, an Oscar winner for "Mediterraneo," delivers a fierce, frightening and deeply moving study of childhood. It's a keeper. - 75
Christian Science Monitor
It's hard to find a current release that so effectively teases the mind and emotions. - 70
Variety
While another director might have imbued the story of a Sicilian boy awakened to his parents' involvement in child abduction with more emotional weight and thematic depth, Salvatores' classically illustrative treatment should open arthouse doors for the visually sumptuous production. - 70
The New Yorker
A lyrical throwback to such movies as René Clément's "Forbidden Games" (1952) and other works of the humanist European cinema of a half century ago. [12 April 2003, p. 89]
