A story of redemption and courage, above all a fundamental message for those who believe that violence can touch us but not involve us directly, in “Family” by Francesco Costabile. Second work by the director from Cosenza after the acclaimed “Una Femmina” of 2022tells the true story of Luigi Celeste, adapting the book “It won’t always be like this. My story of rebirth and redemption behind bars” (Edizioni Piemme), written with Sara Loffredi. A story that is difficult even to listen to, but with a happy ending. According to many critics, the film would have deserved the official competition and not the prestigious Orizzonti section.
The focus is on the drama of children who witness domestic violencea situation for which the legal term “witnessed violence” was coined, but also an exemplary story of how a wound can be transformed into a loophole.
Now an established computer security expert, at 23 years old Luigi (Francesco De Lucia as a child, Francesco Gheghi as a boy) kills his father Franco (Francesco Di Leva), who made him, his mother Licia (Barbara Ronchi) and his brother Alessandro (Stefano Valentini as a child, Marco Cicalese as a boy) live in a climate of constant terror. The young man is sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for voluntary homicide, served first in San Vittore and then in Opera and Bollate. Dramatic years, which Luigi manages to transform into a premise for the future, on the ashes of a past to forget, undertaking the studies that allowed him to realize his dream. The title is significant, perfectly consistent with the story told.
Why this attraction to violence that is already present in “Una Femmina”? “Of course,” explained the director, “these two films are a bit unique, there is gender violence, the violence of patriarchal culture that shows how the male universe swallows up the female one. I was struck by the Latin ending of the term “familia,” a word that should represent the place of love and inclusion, but in Latin it recalls the contract of domination of the “pater familias” with his servants, among whom were also his wife and children. This is the veil of darkness that belongs to the film and is the element that we tried to investigate through Luigi’s story. A dramatic theme that we find in our daily lives. It is a film against the toxicity of the patriarchy.”
For the director and co-writers Vittorio Morioni and Adriano Chiarelli, the real challenge was to adopt a strong narrative point of view, in the awareness that cinema is a tool for social impact. «In a society like ours, so approximate and simplified, crime news often remains confined to names, numbers, dates and morbidity. We experienced it with Giulia Cecchettin and other victims of violence who were never truly told».
The strength of Celeste’s book is instead to return that experience, entering into the complexity of the story. “Cinema allows us to do this – added Costabile – Through the image and its possibility of individual and collective fruition: the spectator arrives at an empathy and a complexity absent in this era in which the restitution of the facts is always journalistic, morbid and simplified. The aim of the film is in fact to immerse the audience in the depth of the abyss of a family that self-destructs”.
The cast includes Tecla Insolia, Enrico Borrello and Carmelo Tedesco. Produced by Palermo-based Tramp Ltd, “Familia” will be in theaters with Medusa from October 2.