The Ciambra (2018)

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Dark, boring, confusing dialogs, no logical sequence of events, I felt no connection to the characters whatsoever. If you're a fan of art films and foreign movies you might like it. I could have saved the 2 hours spent watching this.

This film drags you into the world of Pio, the main character, from the very first shot to the last, making you descend very slowly and blissful back onto your seat, long after the lights have gone on. Unblended cinema magic! You could feel the passion and heart that was put into this throughout; the filming took more than 90 days (wich is abnormally long) but this care and eagerness to bring Pio's world to life in a pure and enthralling way is reflected upon every scene. An important reason for this was probably the characters who felt delightfully authentic, not infected by hollywoodian handsome faces but (apparently the director also used real people from the area) real human faces of wich you simply couldn't doubt there truth and were going straight into your heart. Another decisive factor in the film's relish was beyond a doubt the dynamic and beautiful camera work, capturing the streets of South-Italy and it's powerful faces in warm colours and shifting it's close focus across the action. At the same time A Ciambra shifts your own focus upon Pio's social reality, offering you an absorbing and enriching window upon this poor region in Italy in the spirit of Italian neorealism.

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.

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.