I'm Not Scared
| I'm Not Scared (Io non ho paura) |
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Italian release poster
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| Directed by | Gabriele Salvatores |
| Produced by |
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| Screenplay by |
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| Based on |
Io non ho paura by Niccolò Ammaniti |
| Starring |
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| Music by |
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| Cinematography | Italo Petriccione |
| Edited by | Massimo Fiocchi |
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Production
companies |
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| Distributed by | Medusa Distribuzione |
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Release date
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Running time
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101 minutes |
| Country |
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| Language | Italian |
| Box office | $7.4 million |
I'm Not Scared (Italian: Io non ho paura) is a 2003 Italian crime mystery thriller film directed by Gabriele Salvatores. Francesa Marciano and Niccolò Ammaniti wrote the script, basing it on Niccolò Ammaniti's successful 2001 Italian novel with the same name. The story is set during Italy's "Years of Lead", a time in the 1970s riddled with terrorism and kidnapping, and tells the story of a ten-year-old boy who discovers a terrible crime committed by the entire population of his southern Italian town.
The action of the film takes place in 1978, in a fictional town called Acqua Traverse in Southern Italy, during the hottest summer of the century and the infamous Years of Lead. A nine-year-old boy named Michele Amitrano and a group of his friends set out on a race across scorched wheat fields to a deserted farmhouse. Michele's sister tags along but falls over, breaking her glasses, and she calls out to Michele, who runs back to her. Michele quickly calms her worries about the glasses, and they continue running. They are the last of the group to arrive at the farmhouse, which means that she and Michele must pay a forfeit. However, the leader of the group, Skull, chooses the only girl in the group apart from Michele's sister to pay up instead. He instructs her to expose herself to the boys, and she looks to the others for help, but they refuse to meet her gaze. She reluctantly and hesitantly begins to take off her clothes, when Michele pipes up that he was the one to arrive last and he should be the one to pay.
As his punishment Michele walks the length of a beam, high up in a rickety old barn-like building at the deserted farmhouse, and after that the group is seen going home. As Michele and his sister set off, she asks him where her glasses are, and he goes back to fetch them. While searching for the glasses at the farmhouse, Michele discovers a hole in the ground covered with a sheet of metal. He opens it and sees part of a bare human leg; horrified, due to the limited time he had to investigate the situation, he decides to keep this a secret from the others. He feels threatened by Skull and doesn't want such a big discovery to be taken away from him. The next day, he returns to the place, throwing rocks at the leg. As he moves to pick up another rock, the camera pans to him, on the ground, searching around him in the dirt, where Michele finds another rock to throw. As the camera pans back into the hole, the leg is out of sight. Startled, Michele is suddenly staring down at a zombie-like young boy stumbling out of the darkness and into view. Terrified, Michele hurries home once more, but then his bicycle chain breaks and he is thrown off his bike. As he returns home he is scolded for being late. The next day while playing with friends Michele thinks about the boy and later he decides to visit the zombie-like boy again. Michele finds that the boy is actually alive, although he is very weak. He brings him water and later food. One day, Michele goes to buy bread, to feed the boy. On the way he sees the familiar face of Skull's older brother driving away from the house and thinks this may be the person who has imprisoned the boy. He returns home, making sure that his own presence is not discovered by whoever put the boy there.
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