Mixed by Erry

An Italian film. Naples, the 1980s. Enrico works in a small shop copying music cassettes. He makes mixtapes from songs he chooses himself and becomes known in the neighbourhood. Demand grows. With his two brothers he expands: more decks, more tapes, then a warehouse and a distribution network. From there the film is about a rise. The pirate cassettes go all over Italy; lorries, sellers, printed sleeves and forged tax stamps. The brand takes a name and that name is known like a real label. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but craft: the brothers see what they do as a service and think the music industry was robbing people before they came along. While the rise continues the police and the record companies move in. It is based on a true story. A family in Naples produced pirate cassettes for years, their goods travelled even outside Italy, and the case drew wide attention. The tone is fast and cheerful; the film uses the music of the 1980s heavily and the scenes are built with the look of cassette artwork. Luigi D'Oriano, Giuseppe Arena and Francesco Di Leva are in the cast. Sydney Sibilia directed; he has made comedies from real events before. Who it is for: anyone who likes popular Italian cinema and rise-and-fall stories drawn from life. Who it is not for: anyone expecting critical distance; the film plainly loves its heroes and hardly discusses the harm of piracy.