La paranza dei bambini in the Berlinale-competition : When children become criminals

the Palermo-born photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, a hung-cut kid, had countless shot, or otherwise massacred Victims for the first Time, a boy in his own blood on the roadside, in the middle of a Sicilian town in front of the camera, since the end of the 70s was a nick.

today, The 83-year-old vitale lady with the reddish hair is in Italy as the first Mafia photographer and, indeed, the first woman in the reportage of journalism in the country, a living legend. In the face of danger, in the you has gone by, you were the murders of the Cosa Nostra, their Victims and, later, the offenders again and again a face, you can call them quite a survivor legend. And in Kim Longin Otto's impressive portrait of the photographer, bearing the equivocal title of "Shooting the Mafia" (in the Panorama) says Battaglia – the Name is speaking, the word means battle: "I would burn my pictures sometimes the best." This desire came when she saw the murdered boy and as a photographer but could not look away.

For your own code of honor, the self-proclaimed "Honorable company" was for a long time: no women, no children. They were for the Killer taboo. However, in the deserts of mafia wars towards the end of the last century, culminating in the bomb attacks on the judge Giovanni Falcone and Prosecutor Paolo Borsellino (two friends Letizia Battaglias), it was like a taboo for a long time.

"Gomorrah"author Saviano wrote the script

children are also perpetrators. Perpetrators Are Victims, Victims Of Offenders. According to recent UN Reports, there are about 250 000 children soldiers, abused in Wars and uprisings. A district command centers in Naples mafios, it takes hardly five to ten young people. If you come to support only a couple of heavy weapons, from the simple Beretta to the machine gun. Described by Roberto Saviano in his 2016 in Italy and a year in German under the title "the Clan of The children" published documentary novel. Now the screenplay for the novel adaptation of "La paranza dei bambini"(the competition) comes from him, also at the Berlin film festival under police protection, published in "Gomorrah"-author from Naples.

Saviano and the Script involved a 40-year-old Roman Director and musician Claudio Giovannesi will have to mark focused the over 400-page novel wise: some of the key scenes, the way of the 15-year-old Nicola from the leader of an initially rather harmless gang of Kids to the drug-dealing Boss of a youth clan. A legal work he finds, wants the single, in a Laundry, working mother, however, the extortion of the neapaolitanischen the old town district of Sanità just dominant Camorra Clans free and its already dubious beauty pageants to impress the participating girlfriend Letizia with brand clothes and perfumes.

"Shooting the Mafia". A picture of the photographer Letizia Battaglia.Photo: Letizia Battaglia/Lunar Picutres

unlike in the grandiose "Gomorrah"-film by Matteo Garrone in 2008, a Claudio Giovannesi not raiding with a vortex of Images of the Inferno. The under world of Naples is here, despite the once more as a weapons storage and firing range facility used caves in the mountain in the city to hang, no hell world. It follows the young Horde on their Mopeds and Vespas through the narrow, picturesque Neapolitan streets to the mob apartments and suburban villas in the petty-bourgeois Milieus in training pants and under shirt in front of the TV dawning of the older Capos, their matrons and children in droves. Not the grotesquely overloaded chandeliers, gold cherubs, gold ornaments from the kitchen to the bathroom and the pants pockets were as always full of great Euro notes, one would believe, also material in the heart of the so-called simple people. Only in the case of the Solid champagne flowing all of a sudden, are drugs, corruption, Sex and macho violence is omnipresent.

The movie is a bear-candidate

Hardly gloom. At most a out of the elegant Galleria Umberto, the center of nicked Christmas tree or a couple of night, supposedly illegal fireworks rocket burns backyards drown out the shots, if Nicola and his friends try out their guns at a shabby house roof, with the TV-bowls as targets.

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The Sog, the Giovannesis Film sparked the original Saviano-book titles, is alone in the interaction between the young lay actors and also for Italians only-with subtitles-to-understand, even in the case of verbal hardening gaumig soft Neapolitan language. Such a dialect as in "Gomorrah" is the world language. Because what happens in Naples ' historic centre, in Small, is the Image of seduction, greed, false idols, versagendem state, a symbol of the universal Organized crime. And the young Francesco di Napoli, plays as the Protagonist, Nicola, on a suggestive manner. It makes the Film a bear candidates.

Interactive map: All of the Berlinale cinemas and the program

In his angelic face, the horror is still about the first murder, almost a surprise. At his childishness and boyish brutality as well as tenderness (to the mother, the girlfriend, little brother), a sense of family, piety and superstition are mixed, the joy of Power and a floating melancholy. As he did not know already, this quick young life has no lasting hope. "La paranza" is a fishing net, but the network has also placed on the children of offenders. They are hunter and prey, or as Saviano says, are guilty of innocent.

"La paranza dei bambini": 13.2., 12 o'clock (Friedrichstadt-Palast) & 22: 30 (International), 17.2., 16.15 (Friedrichstadt-Palast). Director and star discuss Wed, 19 PM, at the Italian cultural Institute. Admission is free.

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Robert Saviano in an interview, "Germany is almost a Paradise for organized crime"

Peter Becker

"Shooting the Mafia": 13.2., 17 Am (Cinestar 7), 14.2., 22: 30 (Cinestar 7), 15.2., 17: 30 (Cubix 7), 16.2., 14: 30 (Colosseum 1)