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Best movie of this year hands down!

As Good As It Gets

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Almost a sequel to American director Jonas Carpignanos' multi-prize winning "Mediterraneo", "A Ciambra" succeeds at something every European director has failed to do so far: To give a realistic, non-judgmental portrait of Romani life, in following 14-year-old Pio Amato's rapid coming-of-age process. Pio already appeared in "Mediterraneo", as did his refugee friend (Koudous Seihon), who was the principal character.As you can tell from another review here, the attitude towards Sinti and Roma is to this day extremely racist and completely ignorant of the fact that they have been living in Italy for 600 years (Pio's surname is Sinti, i.e. his family has not migrated from the East). In Italian film, gypsies are always thieves and / or murderous psychopaths, "Suburra" and "Jeeg Robot" being the most notorious recent examples. By just reenacting Romani life, "A Ciambra" succeeds in showing how this racist exclusion of Roma (and refugees) creates exactly what it justifies itself with: a marginalized sub-society which perceives the law as hostile, and therefore resorts to crime as a means of survival and defiance. And in this dog-eats-dog world, family is both the only reliable safety net, and the biggest hindrance to an honest living - the film does a good job showing that.If it's not a masterpiece, then because Carpignano adds nothing to this bleak outlook. There's not a shred of hope for Pio's future, and while this is realistic, it also doesn't give the audience much to work with.

Don't expect lovely shots of the Calabrian countryside in Jonas Carpignano's A Cambria, because this Italian entry for the Oscars is as gritty as gritty gets. The story of Pio's (Pio Amato) coming of age in an impoverished Romani enclave is told with unremitting neo-realism and a point of view almost exclusively young 14 year-old Pio's. It's a companion piece to the director's Mediterranea and a sequel.Realism is what made Italian cinema its reputation as far back as Rossellini in the first half of the 20th century. This iteration dares to place the camera almost on Pio's shoulder to give the sense of everything Pio is seeing and if his decisions are good ones. It doesn't get more than this.That's the rub of this powerful, seemingly documentary capture of small-life in Calabria, modern with cells and cars and anything the gypsies can steal and sell. Because his father and brother are imprisoned, Pio becomes responsible for his family, and he pursues the gangster life with natural instincts, and, well, relish. Moreover, his 15 family members are actor Pio's real family, providing an unparalleled feel of the real. His mother, Iolanda, is a piece of Italian motherhood work that by now could be "central casting."The writer/director's treatment is consistent and relentless: an unwavering close up of impoverished gypsy life, at odds with the "Italians" who surround them and at odds with a society that considers them outsiders, thieves, and liers. The streets are uniformly strewn with garbage, and when a building experiences arson, you are almost ready to say "good riddance." Although so many close-ups of Pio become tiresome, no doubt can exist that you will forget this camera-ready actor whose eyes tell you the combat within his soul.Are you surprised Martin Scorsese is a producer? I'm not. These are the streets he loves to narrate, and they are mean.

28th STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. DAY 3, NOV 10th 2017. "A Ciambra" (2017) premiered in Sweden at the festival on Nov 8th.‪A soundtrack and score vibrating with the power of life. An authenticity rarely seen and felt. Friendship, dreams and desperation.‬‪The second feature by Italian-American writer-director Jonas Carpignano, "A Ciambra" (2017) is shot with amateur Romani actors, more or less portraying themselves. In 2014, he made a 16 minutes short with the same title and main character/actor, depicting one night in his life.‬

In Italy, gypsies have been settled into low-rise apartment blocks. Grandpa is nostalgic about the time when they were nomads, represented in the film by a horse. The story is about his grandson, a 14-year- old who wants to be considered an adult and join the family business. While he is given training, he is always told to stay home. However, when all the adult males are rounded up by police, he springs into action, collecting ransom for cars, stealing, selling drugs, etc. He is assisted by his African best friend, a point of irony as the blacks are looked down upon by the gypsies. Eventually, he has to decide whether to betray his friend.I saw this at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the director pointed out that the extended gypsy family was a real family of non-actors, and the script was based on stories they told of their lives. The portrait is of a culture where crime is their main source of income, and formal education is not valued (even though the boy has to get a girl to read him a text message on his phone). While the director has obvious sympathy for the gypsies, to many others it will serve as a warning to keep these people far from our shores.