Piranhas

In the Sanità district of Naples, fifteen-year-old Nicola and his friends ride around on scooters and want designer clothes. The old criminal order in the neighbourhood has collapsed and nobody has replaced it. The boys see the vacuum and decide to fill it. They buy guns, start collecting protection money, and for a while it works because nobody takes them seriously. The subject is not the mafia but childhood treated as a shield. Nicola starts out protecting his mother's shop and his motive never worsens across the film; what worsens is what he has to do. The form is realist and close: narrow streets, night rides, real locations. Most of the performers are non-professionals cast from the same districts of Naples. The source is a novel by Roberto Saviano, who has lived under protection for years since writing about the Neapolitan crime networks in Gomorrah. Saviano, Claudio Giovannesi and Maurizio Braucci wrote the screenplay together, and the film won the Silver Bear for best screenplay at the Berlin film festival in 2019. Francesco Di Napoli plays Nicola. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian crime realism and hard drama with young protagonists. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope; the narrative worsens from beginning to end and the ending repairs nothing.