Black Souls

Three brothers in Calabria. Luciano herds goats in the hills and tries to keep away from the family. Rocco and Luigi deal drugs in Milan and earn well. Luciano's son Leo is twenty and looks up to his uncles; one night he fires on a bar in the village. That reopens an account settled years ago and all three brothers have to come back. Francesco Munzi directs, from Gioacchino Criaco's novel. The subject is the Ndrangheta and the film does not enter the shape of the mafia epic. There is no display, no set piece, no big speech; the violence is fast and short and there is only silence afterwards. The mountain villages of Calabria are used as real locations and some of the cast are local. Most of the dialogue is in Calabrian dialect and it was shown with subtitles even in Italy. The idea at the centre is that escape is not possible. Luciano chose to stay away for years and it counts for nothing; the family tie is not a choice but a position. It screened in competition at the 2014 Venice film festival and won the David di Donatello for best film the following year. The ending is abrupt and unexplained; the distance the whole film keeps finds its answer in the last scene. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian crime cinema and mafia stories told without ornament. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the characters are hard to tell apart, and the film offers no emotional way in.