Fourteen-year-old Pio idolises his older brother in their small Romani
community in Calabria. Challenges mount after his brother
disappears.
Review by
Musanna Ahmed
Directed by: Jonas Carpignano
Starring: Pio Amato, Koudous Seihon, Damiano Amato
There are several contemporary filmmakers (e.g. Dardenne brothers, Hirokazu
Kore-eda) who are inspired by the neorealist approach made famous by the
Italian auteurs of the mid-20th century. However there are few who go the
whole nine yards in emulating the techniques, and Jonas Carpignano is
one of those exceptions. His two films, Mediterranea and
A Ciambra, use non-professional performers, as in the films of Roberto Rossellini
and Vittorio de Sica, the leading figures of the neo-realist movement. While
the heroes of Clint Eastwood’s
The 15:17 to Paris
push our eyelids to the south, it’s the Amato family at the centre of
A Ciambra who validate how non-professional actors can produce
a truly immersive cinematic experience.
Pio Amato is at the forefront as Pio, a teenager who wants to grow
up fast and is kind of forced to after his older brother Cosimo (Damiano Amato) goes missing. Pio consumes alcohol and cigarettes and would forgo an
invitation to play with his fellow youths if it meant he could hang out with
the adults. One such grown-up is Ayiva (Koudous Seihon), a migrant from Burkina Faso and the protagonist of
Mediterranea. Ayiva becomes a de facto big brother to Pio. What the two share in common
is their lower status in Italian society, Ayiva as a person of colour and
Pio as a member of the Romani community. Specifically, it’s the local Mafia,
referred to as the “Italians,” whom they have to avoid. The central source
of conflict is when Pio goes ahead and steals from them.
Carpignano uses natural lighting and picks up every sound in the vicinity,
really pulling you into Pio’s world. The line between documentary and
fiction is blurred, just as the line is blurred between how much of the real
life Pio is in the character Pio. The naturalism is riveting to behold,
devoid of any superficiality or artificiality, which makes Carpignano’s
harrowing film all the more powerful - it feels like you’re watching a slice
of the life of a real family stricken by one child’s disappearance, and the
other child’s injudicious behaviour, on top of the penurious circumstances
that envelop their lives. The Italian-American filmmaker reaffirms us of his
gift for verisimilitudinous storytelling in A Ciambra.
There are no stylistic ocular flourishes in Carpignano’s style but careful
blocking of the camera grants the opportunity for capturing some very
expressive shots, such as one of a garage door shutting down and obscuring
Pio from the frame after Ayiva shuts down the kid’s proposed idea for them
to steal cars, and a beautiful final shot that culminates Pio’s journey.
What must also be said about the visuals, though, is that cinemagoers are
not advised to sit towards the front for this flick. The hand-held shooting
combined with the predominance of close-ups is an inconvenience when viewing
the movie close to the screen, and a deadly combination for those with the
slightest motion sickness.
Despite that caveat, A Ciambra is true Italian neo-realism in
the 21st century and is as fascinating and culturally potent as the
associated films of the movement’s heyday. With the settings and characters
of A Ciambra and Mediterranea intertwined, the
exploration of Romani people’s lives and the plight of African migrants
through an exciting new filmmaker’s lens is valuable and a breath of fresh
air in contemporary cinema. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has
superheroes crossing over into each other’s movies for intergalactic
adventures, Carpignano is building his own little universe featuring real
people with vital stories, previously unrepresented in cinema.
A Ciambra is on MUBI UK now.