| I'm Not Scared (Io non ho paura) |
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Italian poster for Io non ho paura |
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| Directed by | Gabriele Salvatores |
| Produced by | Marco Chimenz Giovanni Stabilini Maurizio Totti Riccardo Tozzi |
| Written by | Niccolò Ammaniti Francesca Marciano (screenplay) |
| Starring | Giuseppe Cristiano Mattia Di Pierro Aitana Sánchez-Gijón |
| Music by | Ezio Bosso |
| Distributed by | Capitol Films Medusa Distribuzione Miramax Films (USA) |
| Release date(s) | March 14, 2003 April 9, 2004 (USA) June 11, 2004 (UK) |
| Running time | 108 minutes |
| Country | Italy Spain United Kingdom |
| Language | Italian |
| Box office | $7,354,418 |
I'm Not Scared (Italian: Io non ho paura) is a 2003 film directed by Gabriele Salvatores. Francesa Marciano and Niccolo Ammaniti wrote the script based on Niccolò Ammaniti's successful 2001 Italian novel Io non ho paura. The story is during Italy's anni di piombo, a time riddled with terrorism and kidnapping in the 1970s.
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The film takes place in 1978 in a fictional town called Acqua Traverse in Southern Italy during the hottest summer of the century. A ten-year-old boy named Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) and a group of his friends set out across scorched wheat fields in a race. Michele's sister tags along but falls, breaking her glasses, and calls out to Michele, who runs back to her. Michele quickly appeases her worries over the glasses, and they continue running. Of the group, they are the last ones to arrive at the deserted farmhouse, and Michele, therefore, must pay up. However, the leader of the group, Skull, chooses the only girl in the group besides Michele's sister to pay up instead. He instructs her to reveal herself to the boys, and she looks to the others for help, but they refuse to meet her gaze. She is just about to do it when Michele pipes up that he was the one to arrive last and that he should be the one to pay. After Michele walks across a tall beam as punishment, the group is seen going home. As Michele and his sister ride home, she asks him where her glasses are, and he goes back to fetch them. While searching for these glasses in the farmhouse, Michele discovers a hole in the ground covered with a sheet of metal. He opens it and sees a leg; horrified, he runs away. The next day he returns to the site, throwing rocks at the leg. As he moves to pick up another rock, the camera pans to him, on the ground, searching around him in the dirt, where he finds another rock to throw. As the camera pans back into the hole, the leg is out of sight. Michele stares down as a zombie-like young boy stumbles out of the darkness and into view. Terrified, Michele hurries home once more. Michele visits the zombie-boy again, and finds that he is actually alive, however, he is very weak. Michele brings him water and food, making sure that his presence is not discovered by whoever put the boy there each time. As time goes on, Michele visits the boy several times, and we see that the boy is very confused and traumatized from his experiences. He believes himself to be dead and asks Michele if he is his guardian angel. One night, Michele sees on TV that a child named Filippo has been kidnapped from Milan, and the boy in the pictures shown looks just like the boy in the hole. Michele also realizes that his own father is involved in the kidnapping, as well as some other men in the town. He continues visiting Filippo (Mattia di Pierro) and one day he let him out for some hours and then put him back in the hole. One of the kidnappers caught him in the hole with Filippo and punches him. When Michele's father learns that he has been visiting Filippo, he threatens to beat him if he ever goes back to visit the kid again. Michele decides to help Filippo. Even though Filippo has been moved to another location, one of the boys tells Michele where he is. As the adults in the film are discussing who will kill Filippo, Michele sets out to find Filippo and save him. Michele's father draws the short match, and goes to kill Filippo. Instead, he ends up shooting his own son's leg. The film ends on a field after Filippo's rescue when helicopters arrive, where ostensibly Filippo is saved and Michele survives.
I'm Not Scared is based on Niccolò Ammaniti's novel Io non ho paura. Ammaniti got the idea for the book during a road trip to Puglia in the late 1990s.[1] The novel won the 2001 Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction. Since its publication in 2001, the novel sold nearly 700,000 copies and was published in over twenty languages.[1] Jonathan Hunt wrote the English translation, which is available as hardcover and paperback by Canongate, 2003.[2]
The story is set in the fictional town of Acqua Traverse (literally water crossings) in the equally fictitious province of Lucignano (not to be confused with the real town of Lucignano, Tuscany). The film was shot in Basilicata and Puglia, an area of Italy where director Gabriele Salvatores spent his youth. The primary set was in the countryside near Melfi [1]. Salvatores chose to challenge the kind of Italian film that typically becomes popular on the foreign market: "the beautiful ocean, the nostalgic past, mafia, pizza, and mandolins."
The story is loosely based on a true story of a kidnapped boy from Milan during the anni di piombo in the 1970s, a time of turmoil and terrorism in Italy. At the time, it was alarmingly common to kidnap people from the North and transport them to the South, where they would be hidden and sometimes killed unless the ransom was paid. 1978 was the year in which kidnappings in Italy reached an all-time peak of nearly 600. Although many kidnappings were politically motivated, children of wealthy northern families were targeted as well. It became such a problem that the Italian government decided to automatically freeze the assets of any families whose children had been kidnapped and contacted by people wanting a ransom to discourage this phenomenon.
According to Salvatores, the film is not primarily about kidnapping of the time but the mystery revolving around a kidnapping. The story is also about the journey and loss of innocence of a young boy.[1] The majority of the actors in the film, especially the children, were local citizens with no filming or acting experience. Giuseppe Cristiano, who played the main character, had never appeared in a film before. The director spoke with psychologists about the impact of filming on the residents. To not raise hopes, the filmmakers explained to the parents of the child actors that this was not a ticket to Hollywood. The veteran actors Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Dino Abbrescia and Giorgio Careccia were cast in the adult roles.[3]
The vivid scenery in this film is one of its most recognized characteristics. There are many views of fields and hills of wheat, this endless land being the backyard for the children of Acqua Traverse and the setting to their childhood adventures. The film used a strong primary color scheme to portray the way children see the world, focussing on specific objects of interest with a close-up. The film score is primarily by a string quartet, that includes original music by Ezio Bosso, Quartetto d’Archi di Torino and Pepo Scherman as well as work by Canadian Michael Galasso.[1]
Two days after Io non ho paura appeared at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2003, thirty-two countries had purchased the film. Miramax distributed the film in the U.S., where it grossed $1,615,328.[4]