Matteo Garrone’s Italian gangster epic looks at Camorra crime syndicate in Naples

GOMORRA (GOMORRAH) (Matteo Garrone, 2008)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, December 6, 3:30, and Tuesday, December 15, 7:00
Series runs December 4-18
Tickets: $12, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.ifcfilms.com

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Gomorra is a violent, intimate look at the modern-day Camorra crime syndicate in Naples and Caserta. Based on the nonfiction novel by investigative journalist Roberto Saviano — who has been living under police protection since the fall of 2006 — Matteo Garrone’s epic follows five distinct yet interrelated stories set around a dilapidated concrete-block housing project, a sort of Godfather meets The Sopranos filtered through Italian Neo-realism. Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) is a tailor who considers sharing his secrets with a Chinese sweatshop to make some much-needed extra cash. Roberto (Carmine Paternoster) is having second thoughts training under Franco (The Great Beauty’s Toni Servillo), who runs a toxic waste dumping business. Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) has to deal with a delicate, difficult situation when Maria’s (Italian singing star Maria Nazionale) young son joins the secessionists, a rival gang. Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) are loose cannons who keep messing with the wrong people. And Totò (Salvatore Abruzzese) is a thirteen-year-old boy who is helping out the Camorra against his mother’s wishes — and is soon faced with a life-changing decision. Beautifully shot by Marco Onorato and featuring a cast of primarily nonprofessional actors, Gomorra is a deeply involving crime drama, all the more frightening because it’s based on real, current situations. Gomorra is screening December 6 & 15 as part of the MoMA series “Italian Film, 21st-Century Style: A Tribute to Rai Cinema,” which kicks off with Garrone’s latest, Il Racconto dei racconti (Tale of Tales). The two-week retrospective consists of ten films from the last fifteen years released by the Italian studio, including Ermanno Olmi’s Il Mestiere delle armi (The Profession of Arms), Gianni Amelio’s Le Chiavi di casa (The Keys to the House), Emanuele Crialese’s Terraferma, and Alice Rohrwacher’s Le Meraviglie (The Wonders).