At war for love

Directed by Director's notes
  • Pierfrancesco Diliberto
Directed by
  • Pierfrancesco Diliberto
Year
  • 2016
Length
  • 99' min.
Year
  • 2016
Length
  • 99' min.
Cast
  • Pierfrancesco Diliberto
  • Stella Egitto
  • Miriam Leone
  • Andrea Di Stefano
Synopsis

New York, 1943. In a luxurious restaurant a young Sicilian emigrant faces a troubled love story.
Arturo, 35 years old, barely speaks English, falls in love with Flora, the young niece of Alfredo, the restaurant owner. Arturo and Flora are deeply in love and dream to get married but need her father’s blessing. Without any means, Arturo enrolls the US Army and embarks  to Sicily, where Flora’s father lives. An adventurous and romantic journey that unfolds the complexity of organized crime in its early days.

Director's notes
  • I was looking for a story that, while maintaining the spirit of my first film "La mafia uccide solo d’estate" (The Mafia Only Kills in Summer), would show a small man facing great historical events. A film that, in the best tradition of Italian comedy, would run a private story parallel to History. Our ambition was to create – thinking with respect, humility, and a sense of proportion – a masterpiece like Luigi Comencini's "Tutti a casa" (Everybody Go Home), and we tried to do so with a comedy set during the Second World War. Romantic, funny, but also bitter, because it shows how a historical event, seemingly distant, created the conditions for the rise of the mafia, marking the history of our country. The initial inspiration comes from the tormented love story of young Sicilian Arturo (my character) who, in the early 1940s, moves to New York and starts working in a restaurant where he falls in love with the owner's beautiful niece, Flora (Miriam Leone). He wants to marry her, but the girl's uncle has promised her to the son of the local mafia boss. Arturo then, at Flora's suggestion, leaves for a small town in Sicily to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Penniless and disoriented, the young man, in order to reach his destination, bizarrely enlists in the American army which is preparing for the landing in Sicily, an event that will forever change the history of the island, Italy, and the mafia. He will thus become a witness to a collaboration pact that the Anglo-American Allied army stipulated with Cosa Nostra and will end up assisting Lieutenant Philip Catelli (Andrea Di Stefano), helping him decipher the local mentality, trying to explain to him how things work in Sicily and what his compatriots are like. In the background, other stories, like that of Teresa (Stella Egitto), a determined and proud young woman who awaits the return of her prisoner-of-war husband and lives with her son and father-in-law, and those of Saro and Mimmo (Sergio Vespertino and Maurizio Bologna), who will help Arturo meet the father of the woman he loves.
Directed by
  • Pierfrancesco Diliberto
Story
  • Michele Astori
  • Pierfrancesco Diliberto
Screenplay
  • Michele Astori
  • Pierfrancesco Diliberto
  • Marco Martani
Produced by
  • Mario Gianani
  • Lorenzo Mieli
A production
  • Wildside with Rai Cinema
Executive producer
  • Olivia Sleiter
Editing
  • Clelio Benevento
Scenography
  • Marcello Di Carlo
Director of photography
  • Roberto Forza
Costumes
  • Cristiana Riccieri
Music
  • Santi Pulvirenti
Casting
  • Francesca Borromeo
Distributed by
  • 01 Distribution
Director's notes
X

I was looking for a story that, while maintaining the spirit of my first film "La mafia uccide solo d’estate" (The Mafia Only Kills in Summer), would show a small man facing great historical events. A film that, in the best tradition of Italian comedy, would run a private story parallel to History. Our ambition was to create – thinking with respect, humility, and a sense of proportion – a masterpiece like Luigi Comencini's "Tutti a casa" (Everybody Go Home), and we tried to do so with a comedy set during the Second World War. Romantic, funny, but also bitter, because it shows how a historical event, seemingly distant, created the conditions for the rise of the mafia, marking the history of our country. The initial inspiration comes from the tormented love story of young Sicilian Arturo (my character) who, in the early 1940s, moves to New York and starts working in a restaurant where he falls in love with the owner's beautiful niece, Flora (Miriam Leone). He wants to marry her, but the girl's uncle has promised her to the son of the local mafia boss. Arturo then, at Flora's suggestion, leaves for a small town in Sicily to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Penniless and disoriented, the young man, in order to reach his destination, bizarrely enlists in the American army which is preparing for the landing in Sicily, an event that will forever change the history of the island, Italy, and the mafia. He will thus become a witness to a collaboration pact that the Anglo-American Allied army stipulated with Cosa Nostra and will end up assisting Lieutenant Philip Catelli (Andrea Di Stefano), helping him decipher the local mentality, trying to explain to him how things work in Sicily and what his compatriots are like. In the background, other stories, like that of Teresa (Stella Egitto), a determined and proud young woman who awaits the return of her prisoner-of-war husband and lives with her son and father-in-law, and those of Saro and Mimmo (Sergio Vespertino and Maurizio Bologna), who will help Arturo meet the father of the woman he loves.