Taglines: Secrets. Betrayal. Murder.
I’m Not Scared movie storyline. Michele Amitrano is a true country bambino: cute as an angel, curious and enterprising as a rascal and means everything to his parents. Father Pino Amitrano is a truck driver, and is often away. Even when he’s at home he deals with dodgy villagers and other friends, while mother Anna spoils his useless kid sister Maria rotten. Michele is mostly left doing his sisters chores, getting either of them out of trouble, roaming the sparsely populated grain lands on his bicycle and playing with local kids, which often means minor trouble.
One day after a dare leads the mildly mischievous gang to a ruined house, he returns alone to retrieve the glasses that his sister had left behind. Michele accidentally finds a deep hole outside, beneath a metal cover, and sees a boy’s bare foot under a blanket inside. At first Michele rides off for his life, but soon he returns, and after some more scary and disappointing tries finds out it’s a boy his age, blinded by a living his life in the dark, deep hole. Michele conquers his fear and the boy, Filippo’s, confidence, and generously feeds and entertains him. Overhearing his parents and their friends returning to this hole, Michele soon suspects that Filippo is a wealthy family’s kidnapped son.
I’m Not Scared (Italian: Io non ho Paura) is a 2003 Italian crime mystery thriller film directed by Gabriele Salvatores. Francesa Marciano and Niccolò Ammaniti wrote the script, basing it on Niccolò Ammaniti’s successful 2001 Italian novel with the same name. The story is set during Italy’s “Years of Lead”, a time in the 1970s riddled with terrorism and kidnapping, and tells the story of a ten-year-old boy who discovers a terrible crime committed by the entire population of his southern Italian town.
Two days after Io non ho paura appeared at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2003, thirty-two countries had purchased the film. Miramax distributed the film in the United States, where it grossed $1,615,328. Overseas, the film earned $5,739,090, for a worldwide total of $7,354,418.
About the Story
The action of the film takes place in 1978, in a fictional town called Acqua Traverse in Southern Italy, during the hottest summer of the century and the infamous Years of Lead. A nine-year-old boy named Michele Amitrano and a group of his friends set out on a race across scorched wheat fields to a deserted farmhouse. Michele’s sister tags along but falls over, breaking her glasses, and she calls out to Michele, who runs back to her.
Michele quickly calms her worries about the glasses, and they continue running. They are the last of the group to arrive at the farmhouse, which means that she and Michele must pay a forfeit. However, the leader of the group, Skull, chooses the only girl in the group apart from Michele’s sister to pay up instead. He instructs her to expose herself to the boys, and she looks to the others for help, but they refuse to meet her gaze. She reluctantly and hesitantly begins to take off her clothes, when Michele pipes up that he was the one to arrive last and he should be the one to pay.
As his punishment Michele walks the length of a beam, high up in a rickety old barn-like building at the deserted farmhouse, and after that the group is seen going home. As Michele and his sister set off, she asks him where her glasses are, and he goes back to fetch them. While searching for the glasses at the farmhouse, Michele discovers a hole in the ground covered with a sheet of metal. He opens it and sees part of a bare human leg; horrified, due to the limited time he had to investigate the situation, he decides to keep this a secret from the others. He feels threatened by Skull and doesn’t want such a big discovery to be taken away from him.
I’m Not Scared (2003)
Io non ho Paura
Directed by: Gabriele Salvatores
Starring: Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Dino Abbrescia, Giorgio Careccia, Riccardo Zinna, Michele Vasca, Antonella Stefanucci, Diego Abatantuono, Giuseppe Cristiano, Adriana Conserva
Screenplay by: Niccolò Ammaniti, Francesca Marciano
Production Design by: Giancarlo Basili
Cinematography by: Italo Petriccione
Film Editing by: Massimo Fiocchi
Costume Design by: Patrizia Chericoni, Florence Emir
Art Direction by: Ivana Gargiulo
Music by: Ezio Bosso, Pepo Scherman
MPAA Rating: R for disturbing images and language.
Distributed by: Medusa Distribuzione
Release Date: March 14, 2003 (Italy), May 16, 2003 (Spain), June 11, 2004 (UK)
Views: 103
