Director

Claudio Giovannesi

Italy | 2019 | 110 min | Italian with subtitles in English and Arabic

• Producer Carlo Degli Esposti, Nicola Serra
• Production Company Palomar
• Screenplay Roberto Saviano, Maurizio Braucci, Claudio Giovannesi
• Cinematography Daniele Ciprì
• Editing Giuseppe Trepiccione
• Sound Emanuele Cicconi
• Cast Francesco Di Napoli, Viviana Aprea, Mattia Piano Del Balzo
• Contacts

  Elle Driver

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About the Film

From its eye-catching opening scene that shows two teenage gangs in Naples warring over a giant Christmas tree in a Baroque mall to see who will steal and burn it, Piranhas is a crescendo of almost surreal events and vividly drawn characters. Based on the novel by Roberto Saviano of Gomorrah fame, and co-scripted by Saviano, Giovannesi and Maurizio Braucci, the film charts the descent into organized crime of a swaggering but naïve group of 15-year-old buddies led by the inexperienced but cocksure Nicola (Francesco Di Napoli).

Behind his clean-cut face, neat haircut and designer clothes lies a dangerously small brain. Imagining himself to be the savior of the Sanità neighborhood where he lives with his mom and little brother, he goes from dealing marijuana for one local gang to bartering guns, rifles and automatic weapons for another. Far from being depicted as vicious, drugcrazed hot-heads, the gang is characterized as childlike and often dim-witted, like when Nicola persuades Agostino, heir of the Striano clan, to join him in a comically inept takeover bid against the old bosses.

The aggressive-sounding English title Piranhas is less descriptive than the original La paranza dei bambini. In Italian, paranza is a tasty meal of small fish; in another context, it refers to an armed group of teenagers in the service of the Camorra, whose young lives are totally expendable. The film won the Silver Bear for best screenplay at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Deborah Young