Film Review: The Ciambra

Director: Jonas Carpignano

Starring: Pio Amato, Koudous Seihon, Damiano Amato

Running time: 118 mins

Amongst the most unforgettable, if peripheral characters from Jonas Carpignano’s insightful and timely neo-realistic exploration of the European refugee predicament Mediterranea, was the wily young Romani pre-teen Pio Amato.  Here, in Carpignano’s follow-on feature The Ciambra, Pio is moved to center stage as we discover a 14-year-old boy desperate to grow up and provide for his family once his older brother is sent to prison.  The title refers to a small Romani community in Calabria, southwest Italy, where Pio lives with his extended family, including an elderly grandfather who we briefly, but beautifully see as a younger man in a mesmeric opening scene. 

Perhaps owing to his perceived inexperience, or his understated charm and non-threatening presence, Pio is one of the few members of his community who can move with ease amongst the region’s various factions, including the local Mafia and an African immigrant community, as well as navigating the different cliques within his own society.  Whilst this is a coming of age story of sorts, it’s less a song of innocence and experience, and more a tale of experience and more experience.  Unlike most other 14-year-olds, Pio chain smokes, drinks wine, and attempts to provide for his family by stealing cars, breaking into houses and nicking train passengers' luggage. 

When his older brother is caught driving a stolen car, Pio takes it upon himself to become what he sees as a real man, embarking on a series of risky thefts which start to earn him an incredibly risky but regular source of income which he gives straight to his mother. 

From the beguiling opening scene, Carpignano invites you into a fascinating, carefully woven world rich in texture and authenticity.  The realism is so extreme at times that it is possible to forget that you are watching a narrative film and not a documentary about Romani communities in southern Italy.  The scenes in which Pio and his family sit around the table during dinner, for example, have an almost unnerving sense of realism, as siblings squabble, parents laugh and drink and everyone talks over one another. 

It’s within this authenticity that the film’s main strength lays.  Filmed with participants from the community that it portrays, including newcomer Pio, who acts under his own name and alongside his family members, The Ciambra heralds a resurgence of the Italian neo-realism tradition of the likes of Visconti and De Sica.  There’s an inherent rawness to Pio’s performance that feels like it simply could not have been taught.  It’s a performance of muscle, reflex and vibrancy that can only come with portraying the truth of your own existence. 

Both Pio’s wonderful performance and the film itself hold an air of mystery that intrigues as much as it entertains.  There’s a cinematic language created by Carpignano that complements the unschooled performer perfectly; we’re watching something fictional, but it somehow holds far more honesty than the majority of documentaries.  As much as it harks back to the neo-realism tradition, it echoes Werner Herzog’s ecstatic truth to an extent, in that a director has utilised fiction in order to mine some previously unreachable semblance of authenticity. 

It’s clear to see why Martin Scorsese was keen to attach himself as Executive Producer, and why the critical response to The Ciambriahas been so positive.  It’s a beguiling, understated masterpiece. 

Did you know? The Ciambra was Italy's submission to the Foreign Language Film Award of the 90th Annual Academy Awards.

The Ciambra is screening at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 21 June