La Malavita (The Underworld)

The film develops the story of an ex-baby gangster, Sasà Striano, who after so many years in prison and theatrical work, returns to Naples to stage a Macbeth in Neapolitan, and he begins a journey in the Naples of the alleys in search of a original cast of "real people". In this journey, Sasà clashes with a criminal city that has changed profoundly in recent years; by now the so-called Paranze dei bambini (camorra clan of childrens), the baby gangs that have attacked the dominance of the Camorra clans by killing and occupying the market squares, have gone from success to catastrophe. Sasà walks, and meets in a series of improvised auditions for the alleys and in the ravines of the criminal city, boys and women of the underworld. During the auditions, in which environments and characters from the original Macbeth are adapted to a conflict between Camorra gangs, we discover how his dynamics are impressively similar to the tragic Middle Ages described by Shakespeare. Sasà tests three gangs of young people: the first is that of Enzo and two fellow ex-drug dealers from the Vele di Scampia, with whom he discusses the marginalization from which they are unable to escape for reasons economic, and then shifting the focus to the nascent wave of crime against the very young, the theme of education absent in certain areas also emerges. Then Lino, a theater lover who is content to survive by selling smuggled cigarettes, with some comrades from the Borgo, try to understand how they could take an associative and cultural space in the neighborhood to invest in themselves. Finally Pippo and his band of young repentant thieves face a psychodramatic audition in Forcella, recalling the killing of the young Annalisa Durante: an innocent blood from which, symbolically, trace the end of the old Camorra system, and the beginning of vertical conflicts (young adults) in the current underworld, which are causing so much alarm in the city. In this direction Sasà meets, and with the usual technique of theatrical psychodrama reconstructs, also with Delia, the wife of Emanuele Sibillo's killer, the last phase of this social reportage, and the beginning of his theatrical catharsis: she becomes LADY MACBETH . But the most important encounter that Sasà makes in his journey-mission is the one with Lorella, a good girl who makes a living by cooking crack and stealing, and who in a series of meetings he convinces to stop, to try and give herself a better future. , clean. However, the real ANTAGONIST to Sasà's journey is Lorella, because to carry out this ferry she will have to face prison once again, she is in fact arrested during filming and today, as soon as she gets out, she meets her children again, and decides to abandon the crime to join to Sasà's proposal, and us to finally close our film. This journey of an actor in the alleys, which poses a choice to young people "are you willing to leave the gun to take the book?" represents a paradigm of the possible redemption of a generation in difficulty, in Naples as throughout the world. In the journey which is a kind of inspection / casting, Sasà also meets his family, and other characters capable on an emotional level of bringing a profound understanding of reality, such as Don Luigi Merola, the anti-Camorra parish priest.

Other credits:

• Directed By: Paolo Colangeli
• Writers: Paolo Colangeli, Sasa' Striano
• Cast: Sasa' Striano, Lorella Petrosini, Delia Zarn, Ciro Pirro Ciro Pirro