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Directorial duo Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (“Sicilian Ghost Story”) tell the true tale of Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro – who was dubbed “the last godfather” – in their new drama “Sicilian Letters,” launching on Thursday from the Venice Film Festival.

“Sicilian Letters” pairs two top Italian actors — Elio Germano, who plays Messina, and Toni Servillo as his antagonist Catello, a shady secret services operative who is trying to catch him — working in tandem for the first time. The title refers to a surreptitious correspondence between them using “pizzini,” small slips of paper that the Sicilian Mafia used for high-level communications.

The film looks at a time during Denaro’s three decades as a fugitive from Italian justice, when he was at the peak of his nefarious powers. After being on the run for three decades, Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January 2023 outside an upscale medical facility in Palermo, where...

France’s Les Films du Losange is taking international sales outside Italy on “Sicilian Letters” (“Iddu”), the hotly anticipated drama about Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro – who was dubbed “the last godfather” – directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (“Sicilian Ghost Story”).

“Sicilian Letters” pairs two top Italian actors — Elio Germano, who plays Messina (see first-look image above) and Toni Servillo (first-look image below) as his antagonist Catello, a shady secret services operative — working in tandem for the first time. The title refers to a surreptitious correspondence between them using “pizzini,” the small slips of paper that the Sicilian Mafia uses for high-level communications.

The film – which is expected to launch on the fall festival circuit – looks at a time during Denaro’s three decades as a fugitive from Italian justice, when he was at the peak of his nefarious powers. After being on the run for three decades,...

Toni Servillo, who played Roman socialite Jep Gambardella in Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning “The Great Beauty,” will star in a drama about Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro, dubbed “the last godfather” directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (“Sicilian Ghost Story”).

Also starring in the hotly-anticipated drama titled “Iddu” – which means “Him” in Sicilian dialect – is Italian A-list actor Elio Germano, winner of a Cannes best actor prize for Daniele Luchetti’s “Our Life” in 2010 and more recently of Italy’s 2021 David di Donatello Award for Giorgio Diritti’s “Hidden Away.”

The roles respectively being played by Servillo and Elio Germano are being kept under wraps.

After being on the run for three decades, Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January 2023 outside an upscale medical facility in Palermo, where he had been undergoing cancer treatment for a year under false identity. The top mafioso, convicted of masterminding some of Italy...

The story of Italy’s most-wanted Mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, whose recent arrest by police in Palermo after 30 years on the run made global headlines, is set to become a big-budget film.

Rome-based producer Marco Belardi (“Perfect Strangers”) has acquired rights to ace anti-Mafia journalist Lirio Abbate’s book about the Cosa Nostra boss. The book is titled “U Siccu,” which is Sicilian dialect that translates as “The Skinny One.”

Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January by dozens of police officers outside an upscale medical facility in Palermo where he had been undergoing cancer treatment for a year under false identity.

Belardi’s company Bamboo Productions has announced plans for the tale of this elusive top mafioso, convicted of masterminding some of Italy’s most heinous slayings – including the killings of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and the grisly murder of a Mafia turncoat’s young son, who...

The films of director Franco Maresco (“Belluscone: A Sicilian Story”) are an acquired taste, rarely developed by non-Italian palates, and “The Mafia Is Not What It Used to Be” is a prime example. Playing in the nether regions separating documentary and fiction, Maresco is a humorist who expresses his frustration at Italian politics with absurdism — a legitimate response given how surreal some of the situations can be. His style, however, is abrasive and pandering, while his voice acts as a near constant accompaniment as he “interviews” characters whose benighted pro-Berlusconi attitudes (as in his last film) or complacency about the Mafia, as here, are played as farce. Though the word “mockumentary” is oddly rarely applied to Maresco’s exasperating movies, there’s every sign his subjects are scripted; if they weren’t, his manner of ridiculing these people would be offensive. “Mafia” is strictly for locals.

Here’s the setup:...

For decades Marco Bellocchio has been making films dealing with important moments of Italian history, most successfully with Good Morning, Night, his look at the Aldo Moro kidnapping by the Red Brigade, and Vincere, about Mussolini. He’s back in Cannes with a film in competition, this time looking at the maxi Mafia trials of the 1990s, which led to a slew of convictions, in part thanks to the traitor of the title, ex-Cosa Nostra ‘soldier’ turned state witness Tommaso Buscetta.

Buscetta is played by the extremely watchable Pierfrancesco Favino, whose portrayal of this don is both highly credible and somewhat disturbing. The latter is not due to Favino’s performance, which is one of his best, but to the director’s choice to depict Buscetta as a man of honour. Instances of Buscetta’s past are glimpsed throughout the film, but there is little evidence of what this man...

Rome – Canneseries competition entry “The Hunter” is being hailed as a watershed production for Italian pubcaster Rai and certainly stands out as the most innovative show among a Rai content package just picked up by Amazon Prime Video.

About a real Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi, ”The Hunter” is produced by Rome-based Cross Productions — which is controlled by Germany’s Beta Film — in tandem with Rai Fiction. The 12-episode “Hunter” skein reconstructs the vigorous reaction prompted in 1993 by the 1992 bomb murders of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. An anti-Mafia effort of unprecedented scope was unleashed that led to hundreds of arrests and marked a turning point in Italy’s fight against Cosa Nostra.

This pivotal hunt is narrated through multiple prisms but mainly through that of young and ambitious provincial prosecutor Saverio Barone, played by Francesco Montanari (“Crime Novel”). His character is...