Synopsis
The Ciambra (A Ciambra, 2017) is Jonas Carpignano's Italian crime drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Fourteen-year-old Pio, from a Romani neighborhood in the Calabrian town of Gioia Tauro, is in a rush to be a man — he smokes, drinks, and slips easily between the area's three worlds: the Roma, the Italians, and a community of African migrants.
Pio shadows his older brother Cosimo, picking up the trade of the streets — petty theft, resale, quiet deals. Then Cosimo is taken away, and the boy gets his chance to prove he can hold the family together. One more job goes sideways, and Pio faces a choice where growing up means betraying someone close to him. The cast are all non-professionals — the real Amato family, who live in that very neighborhood — which makes the film hard to tell from a documentary.
It screened at Cannes and was Italy's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, with Martin Scorsese among its producers. A tough, unsentimental look at a childhood that has no time to be one. Stream The Ciambra (2017) online on iFILM.
Starring
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