Today’s Prayer Focus

I'm Not Scared

MPA Rating: R-Rating (MPA) for disturbing images and language.
Moral Rating: not reviewed
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Drama
Length: 1 hr. 50 min.
Year of Release: 2004
USA Release:
Copyright, Miramax Films Copyright, Miramax Films Copyright, Miramax Films Copyright, Miramax Films Copyright, Miramax Films
Relevant Issues
Copyrighted
Featuring Giuseppe Cristiano, Mattia Di Pierro, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Dino Abbrescia, Diego Abatantuono
Director GabrieleSalvatores
Producer Marco Chimenz, Giovanni Stabilini, Maurizio Totti, Riccardo Tozzi
Distributor

Here’s what the distributor says about their film: “Italian director Gabriele Salvatores (MEDITERRANEO) directs this eerie… suspense thriller involving a 10-year-old boy who lives in rural southern Italy. It is summertime and Michele (Guiseppe Cristiano) is free to spend the long sunny days riding his bike and running through the wheat fields. In fact, the wheat could be considered Michele’s costar, as it often consumes the entire scope of the screen showing how Michele plays, hides, and ponders life in the vast expanses of flowing yellow stalks. Because there are only a few other children in the village Michele often plays alone, and one day he discovers a hole in the ground, obscured by wheat, where a boy his age is chained and imprisoned. The boy has clearly been starved and mistreated, yet Michele approaches him fearlessly and attempts to make friends with him.

With the dreaminess that is a 10-year-old’s truest treasure, Michele doesn’t ask too many questions, nor does he draw conclusions about why the boy is in the hole, or who put him there. Through the expressions on young Michele’s face, viewers can read his light questioning of human existence, human morality, and human rights. However, as the film draws on, subtly revealing shocking secrets about the adults in Michele’s village, the beauty of this utterly simple yet deadly powerful plot come clear.

I’M NOT SCARED is a moving film built on crystal clear images of the Italian sun, sky, and wheat fields; strangely offset by its startling loss-of-innocence story.”


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Movie Critics
…a startling mix of genres: a memory piece drenched in nostalgia for a lost childhood, clothed in the form of a thriller that grabs you by the throat…
Erica Abeel, Film Journal
…has the feel of a fairytale, but a darker and more sinister one. With plenty of genuine tension and an unusual and well-told story…
Tiscali UK