New Italian Drama A Chiara Premieres at Cannes Film Festival

Premiering at Cannes Film Festival and directed by Jonas Carpignano, A Chiara (Europa Cinemas Cannes Label for Best European Film) centers on the Guerrasio family in Gioia Tauro, a commune in the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria, on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy.

Claudio and Carmela’s eldest daughter’s 18th birthday began as a happy occasion with the tight-knit family in good spirits with their children having a healthy competition on the dance floor. All is well until the next day when the father, Claudio, unexpectedly disappears and 15-year-old Chiara is the one to not only investigate but learns of her father’s mafia ties and is forced to decide her fate and what future awaits her.

A Chiara includes nods to characters first seen in Jonas’ previous films, A Ciambra and Mediterranea and stars Swamy Rotolo, Claudio Rotolo, Grecia Rotolo, Carmela Fumo, Giorgia Rotolo, Antonio Rotolo, Vincenzo Rotolo, Antonina Fumo, Giusi D’Uscio, Patrizia Amato, Concetta Grillo, Koudous Seihon, Pio Amato, and Iolanda Amato.

The director gives insight into the mafia background, the meaning behind the film as well as casting Swamy Rotolo for the role as Chiara below.

Jonas Carpignano on meeting Swamy Rotolo, who stars as Chiara:

“I was extremely lucky. In 2015 I was preparing A Ciambra and we did a small casting because one scene, in the school, required extras. Swamy came along with her aunt. She was 9 or 10 at the time. I’d just finished the screenplay of A Chiara. The second I saw her, I knew she was Chiara. I happened to know her aunt very well, her cousins, her family. Over the years, I saw her grow up and I never changed my mind. Gioia Tauro is a small town and I often saw her on the promenade, eating ice cream with her friends or pizza with her father. I got to know her better and I rewrote the script with her in mind. In the film, all the characters are her real family.”

Jonas on defining A Chiara as a film about the courage it takes to face the truth:

“It’s a film about family, about father-daughter relations. It’s a film which talks about how people learn to find their own moral compass, and how they learn to navigate their surroundings. If I had to find a common thread in my three films, that would be it.”

On the mafia’s crimes and violence staying offscreen.

“I’ve spent ten years in Gioia Tauro. Any search engine associates this town with the mafia. As soon as I mention its name, people talk to me about the mafia. As if there were shootings in the street all the time. But none of that ever happens. I never saw the intense violence associated with the idea of mafia in Gioia Tauro. For me, A Chiara is much more a film about family than about the mafia. Of course, the mafia culture permeates many aspects of everyday life. But it is not dominant in the way that most people think. When I see movies about the mafia with men driving around in sports cars with guns in their back pockets, it doesn’t correspond to what I’ve seen in my time in Gioia.”

Carpignano describes the law that’s referred to in the film:

“I was working on Mediterranea when I first read a long article about this law. The ’Ndrangheta, the mafia in Calabria, is considered one of the most impermeable because unlike the Sicilian mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra or the American mafias, it is based solely on blood ties and family in the strict sense of the word. It is impossible to join a clan if you do not have a blood relationship with its members. Because of this, there are never any turncoats in this mafia, because nobody turns against their own family. To break this circle the state and the social services of Calabria have decided to take children away from their families until they are 18. Ideally, to give them a chance. Now, on one hand, I understand the logic behind the law, and I understand why it can be effective. That said, I have always been very skeptical of this approach from an emotional standpoint. Living in Gioia Tauro, I’ve seen the profound emotional effect a sudden change in life on a 10-year-old girl whose father had been arrested. I will never forget her face when she realized that she would not see her father for a very long time, and as she started to grapple with what this means for her family. I’ve also come into contact with people who were part of this program and these two things together shaped the point of view of this film. I knew then that the best way to talk about my doubts and my skepticism was through the eyes of a very young girl. The mafia has a very patriarchal structure, with fathers passing on power to their sons, or nephews, etc. And making the film from the point of view of a girl allowed us to escape the preconceived notions one has about mafia families and tell the story from the point of view of a family, not a just a mafia family, but a family.”

A Chiara premieres Friday, July 16 at 4:45 PM CET at the Theater Croisette with a runtime of 120 minutes. Watch the trailer below.