| The Sicilian Girl | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Marco Amenta |
| Screenplay by | Marco Amenta Sergio Donati Gianni Romoli |
| Produced by | Simonetta Amenta Tilde Corsi Gianni Romoli |
| Music by | Pasquale Catalano |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 115 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Languages | Italian, Sicilian |
The Sicilian Girl (Italian : La siciliana ribelle) is a 2008 Italian film directed by Marco Amenta. The film is inspired by the story of Rita Atria, a key witness in a major Mafia investigation in Sicily.
Beginning in 1985 in Balata, Sicily, the eleven-year-old Rita Mancuso witnessed the assassination of her beloved father Don Michele by a rival Mafia family. Six years later, her brother is killed by the Mafia as well. Determined to avenge the murders, she decides to break the code of silence and goes to an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Palermo with her detailed diaries to be used as evidence. Being forced to flee her village, she is put into witness protection and transferred to a safe house in Rome.
For The Sicilian Girl, Amenta received a David di Donatello nomination for Best New Director. [1] According to a New York Times movie review, the film is hobbled by sluggish direction by Amenta, who previously addressed Atria’s story in his 1997 documentary, One Girl Against the Mafia: Diary of a Sicilian Rebel. [2]
Rita Atria's family have condemned the film; Atria's niece, Vita Maria Atria, said that "I don't believe that any of this helps to commemorate my aunt, but only serves economic ends which I really do not consider appropriate." [3]
Corleone is an Italian town and comune of roughly 11,158 inhabitants in the Metropolitan City of Palermo, in Sicily.
Paolo Emanuele Borsellino was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian Mafia. After a long and distinguished career, culminating in the Maxi Trial in 1986–1987, on 19 July 1992, Borsellino was killed by a car bomb in Via D'Amelio, near his mother's house in Palermo.
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Rita Atria was a witness and key collaborator in a major Mafia investigation in Sicily. She committed suicide in July 1992, a week after Cosa Nostra killed prosecutor Paolo Borsellino, with whom she had been working.
Salvatore Riina, called Totò, was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s with the assassinations of Antimafia Commission prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, resulting in widespread public outcry, legal change and a major crackdown by the authorities. He was also known by the nicknames la belva and il capo dei capi.
The via D'Amelio bombing was a terrorist attack by the Sicilian Mafia, which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on 19 July 1992. It killed Paolo Borsellino, the anti-Mafia Italian magistrate, and five members of his police escort: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, and Claudio Traina.
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The Società Foggiana, also known as Mafia Foggiana and the fifth mafia, is a mafia-type Italian organized criminal organization and criminal society operating in a large part of the Province of Foggia, including the city of Foggia itself, and having significant infiltrations also in other Italian regions.