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Stolen Childhood

Original title: Certi Bambini
Italy, 2004

Director: Frazzi, Andrea & Antonio
Production company: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali
Age recommendation: 14 years and up

Synopsis:
Rosario lives in a working class complex and looks after his old and ill grandmother Liliana. Once he has attended to his grannie he goes to play with the other children in the street. The territory of this young criminals’ gang’s foreys sweeps from the gaming store Las Vegas to a burger. The children spend their daily existence in aping the adults and imitating their worse behaviours.

The city around them is dark, uncertain and ruled by the camorra and the low life. In a day like any other Rosario comes out of his house in soccer suit, with a bag in his hand, and walks towards the underground. In his journey towards an unknown destination, the child re-lives his recent past in a flash-back.
We get to know his friends, his environment, his life, divided between young fools and a few volunteers in a centre that helps troubled families. He admires two young men: Damiano, a bad influence and a bullyboy felon, and Santino, a volunteer at the centre. The child divides himself between the two acquaintances and he is alternatively influenced by one or the other. In the helping centre he meets Caterina, a young girl whom he falls in love with. His life finally seems to change for the better. For the first time he experiences positive emotions and sentiments, but his dreams are destined to wane… Rosario finds out that Caterina and Santino have a story. His frustration grows and feeds on hatred. The zenith is reached when Caterina, now pregnant, dies accidentally in childbirth. Rosario now wants revenge and decides to murder the doctor he deems responsible for Caterina’s death. His attempt to shoot him is a failure, but this undertaking casts him definitively in the low life’s hands. Rosario gets off the underground and walks through a tunnel. A man is coming towards him from the other direction. Rosaria drops his soccer bag, a pistol is wrapped up a small towel… Rosario, on the floor, raises his head and watches the man approach. He unlocks the security catch and stands up…
From the novel by Diego De Silva.

Festivals:
Brussels 2004 (awarded), Antwerp/Brugge 2005, Du Grain á Dèmoudre Gonfreville l'Orcher 2005, Würzburg 2006

World sales address/es:
Mikado Film (I)

Sold to:
Mikado Film (I)