La mafia non è più quella di una volta

In 2017, 25 years after the Capaci and Via D’Amelio bombings, Franco Maresco decided to make a new film. He found the stimulus to do this in a recent work he had dedicated to Letizia Battaglia, the photographer now in her eighties who has used her pictures to tell the story of the Mafia wars and was included in The New York Times 2017 list of eleven powerful women around the world. Maresco felt the need to feature alongside Letizia a figure from the other side of the fence: Ciccio Mira, the ‘legendary’ organiser of street parties who had already played a leading role in Maresco’s 2014 documentary Belluscone. Una storia siciliana. In the few years that separate the two films Mira seems to have changed. Perhaps he is seeking redemption, as man and as manager, to the point of organising a singular event at the Zen in Palermo: a concert of Neomelodic singers for Falcone and Borsellino. And yet his words still betray a certain nostalgia for “the old-time Mafia.” Meanwhile, as they attend the celebrations staged in memory of the martyrs of the fight against the Mafia, Maresco’s skepticism provides a marked contrast with Battaglia’s passion. (Venice International Film Festival)