''The Traitor'' ( it, Il traditore) is a 2019 internationally co-produced
biographical
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definit ...
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
co-written and directed by
Marco Bellocchio
Marco Bellocchio (; born 9 November 1939) is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor.
Life and career
Born in Bobbio, near Piacenza, Marco Bellocchio had a strict Catholic upbringing – his father was a lawyer, his mother a schooltea ...
, about the life of
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta (; 13 July 1928 – 2 April 2000) was an Italian mobster and a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He became one of the first of its members to turn informant and explain the inner workings of the organization.
Buscetta participated i ...
, the first
Sicilian Mafia
The Sicilian Mafia, also simply known as the Mafia and frequently referred to as Cosa nostra (, ; "our thing") by its members, is an Italian Mafia-terrorist-type organized crime syndicate and criminal society originating in the region of Sicily a ...
boss who was treated by some as ''
pentito
''Pentito'' (; lit. "repentant"; plural: ''pentiti'') is used colloquially to designate collaborators of justice in Italian criminal procedure terminology who were formerly part of criminal organizations and decided to collaborate with a public ...
''.
Pierfrancesco Favino
Pierfrancesco Favino (; August 24, 1969) is an Italian actor, voice actor and producer. He has appeared in more than fifty European and American movies and television series since the early 1990s, including '' The Prince of Homburg'' (1997), '' T ...
stars as Buscetta, alongside
Maria Fernanda Cândido
Maria Fernanda Cândido (born May 21, 1974) is a Brazilian actress, television presenter, and former model.
Biography
Maria Fernanda Cândido lived in Curitiba from the age of four to twelve, when she moved to São Paulo with her family. Her ...
, Fabrizio Ferracane, Fausto Russo Alesi and
Luigi Lo Cascio
Luigi Lo Cascio (born 20 October 1967) is an Italian actor. He won the David di Donatello as best actor for his starring role in ''I cento passi''. In 2012, he debuted as film director and writer with '' La città ideale''.
Filmography
*2000: ' ...
.
''The Traitor'' premiered in competition at the
2019 Cannes Film Festival
The 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival took place from 14 to 25 May 2019. Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu served as jury president. The Palme d'Or went to the South Korean film ''Parasite'', directed by Bong Joon-ho; Bong became t ...
, and was released theatrically in 23 May by 01 Distribution, and on 6 November in France by Ad Vitam Distribution. It received positive reviews from critics, and earned $8.9 million worldwide at the box office.
Plot
In the 1980s, the period of maximum power of the mafia clans in Italy, the Cosa Nostra of
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...
and
Corleonesi
The Corleonesi Mafia clan was a faction within the Corleone family of the Sicilian Mafia, formed in the 1970s. Notable leaders included Luciano Leggio, Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Provenzano, and Leoluca Bagarella.
Corleonesi affiliates were n ...
factions (headed by
Totò Riina
Salvatore Riina (; 16 November 1930 – 17 November 2017), called (, Totò being the diminutive of Salvatore), was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s ...
) competing for the drug market, maintaining a facade of friendship and collaboration. Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), affiliated with Cosa Nostra and known as the "boss of two worlds", senses the imminent war between families and decides to move to Brazil, where he can follow his business in peace. As he predicted, after his departure tensions begin and the first victims of the feud fall, including two of his sons and his brother. But Buscetta is captured and tortured by the Brazilian police. The mafioso understands that he is facing certain death when his extradition to Italy is agreed. Unexpectedly, judge
Giovanni Falcone
Giovanni Falcone (; 18 May 1939 – 23 May 1992) was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian ...
(Fausto Russo Alesi) offers him a way out: to collaborate with the police and the judiciary, enjoying the protection of the state. Buscetta, who for some time no longer recognizes himself in the violent and unscrupulous actions of the Cosa Nostra and linked to an idea of the mafia that protects poor people, decides to accept, also to take revenge for the reprisals and persecutions against him and his family. He thus became the first justice collaborator in Italian history, making possible the institution in 1986 of the
Maxi-Trial
The Maxi Trial ( it, Maxiprocesso) was a criminal trial against the Sicilian Mafia that took place in Palermo, Sicily. The trial lasted from 10 February 1986 (the first day of the Corte d'Assise) to 30 January 1992 (the final day of the Supreme ...
with 475 defendants in the bunker-court of Palermo, where his testimonies - and those of
Totuccio Contorno (Luigi Lo Cascio) - lead to the condemnation and arrest of numerous members of the mafia, put to the test for the first time and in the spotlight of the state and public opinion.
Organized crime will respond with the assassination of Judge Falcone in 1992 in the attack known as the "
Capaci massacre
The Capaci bombing ( it, Strage di Capaci) was a terror attack by the Sicilian Mafia that took place on 23 May 1992 on Highway A29, close to the junction of Capaci, Sicily. It killed magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo, ...
", where in addition to the magistrate, his wife
Francesca Morvillo and three escort agents lost their lives. Buscetta, under protection in the United States, will return to Italy to honor the pact with Falcone and testify in the so-called "trial of the century", which involved
Giulio Andreotti
Giulio Andreotti ( , ; 14 January 1919 – 6 May 2013) was an Italian politician and statesman who served as the 41st prime minister of Italy in seven governments (1972–1973, 1976–1979, and 1989–1992) and leader of the Christian Democra ...
, the main exponent of the
Christian Democrats
__NOTOC__
Christian democratic parties are political parties that seek to apply Christian principles to public policy. The underlying Christian democracy movement emerged in 19th-century Europe, largely under the influence of Catholic social tea ...
and a great protagonist of Italian politics in the second half of the 1900s, and numerous other politicians, thus bringing to light the strong ties between the state and the Mafia.
Cast
Release
''The Traitor'' was released theatrically in Italy on 23 May 2019 by
01 Distribution, and in France on 6 November 2019.
Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics Inc. is an American film production and distribution company that is a division of Sony Pictures. It was founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom. It distributes, produc ...
took the film for North and Latin America, Australia and New Zealand; it was released in select theaters in the United States on 31 January 2020, and in Canada on 7 February 2020. It was later released on DVD/Blu-ray and video on demand on 12 May 2020.
Reception
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews. The website's critical consensus reads: "While it doesn't probe particularly far below the surface of its central character, ''The Traitor'' tells its fact-based story with enough energy to entertain."
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 64 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Awards
It was selected to compete for the
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
at the
2019 Cannes Film Festival
The 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival took place from 14 to 25 May 2019. Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu served as jury president. The Palme d'Or went to the South Korean film ''Parasite'', directed by Bong Joon-ho; Bong became t ...
. It was selected as the Italian entry for the
Best International Feature Film at the
92nd Academy Awards
The 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 2019 and took place on February 9, 2020, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, beginning at 5:00 ...
.
The film received 4 nominations to the
32nd European Film Awards
The 32nd European Film Awards were presented in Berlin, Germany on 7 December 2019.
Selection Feature
The list of feature-length fiction films recommended for a nomination for the 2019 European Film Awards.
* ''I Do Not Care If We Go Down in ...
, including
Best Film
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
,
Best Director Best Director is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards. It may refer to:
Film awards
* AACTA Award for Best Direction
* Academy Award for Best Director
* BA ...
,
Best Screenwriter,
Best Actor. It also won seven awards (out of 11 nomination) at the
Nastro d'Argento
The Nastro d'Argento, also known by its translated name Silver Ribbon, is an Italian film award awarded each year since 1946 by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists (Italian: ''Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani ...
: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Score, Best Actor (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Best Supporting Actor (Luigi Lo Cascio and Fabrizio Ferracane).
See also
*
*
Notes
References
External links
*
''The Traitor''at
Festival de Cannes
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Traitor, The
2019 films
2019 biographical drama films
2019 crime drama films
Italian crime drama films
2010s Italian-language films
Films about the Sicilian Mafia
Films shot in Palermo
Films shot in Rome
Films shot in Rio de Janeiro (city)
Films set in Rio de Janeiro (city)
Films directed by Marco Bellocchio
Italian biographical drama films
Films scored by Nicola Piovani
Biographical films about criminals
Sony Pictures Classics films
Cultural depictions of Italian men