The Interval

In a huge abandoned building on the edge of Naples, two young people are locked in. Veronica is being held there for having crossed the clan boss of her neighbourhood; Salvatore, a shy boy who sells ice cream for a living, has been forced to guard her. Both have grown up beyond their years, yet they react to the same situation entirely differently: Veronica is restless and rebellious, Salvatore does what he is told with a compliance that could be fear or could be realism. As the hours pass, the hostility between them turns into an inevitable closeness. After years of documentary work, Leonardo Di Costanzo built his first fiction film this way: never showing the Camorra, staying inside one location, telling it through two young faces. It played in Horizons at Venice in 2012 and won the critics’ prize there.