Gabriele Salvatores
Io Non Ho Paura

There is the sun, there is wheat, an immense sea of golden yellow spikes so intense that they would make the Barilla pasta commercials envious. Of course, it's also thanks to the bionic eye of modern cinematic technology, but it’s an artificial magic that the viewer grants to Salvatores, because the colors of our memories are always how we want them to be, not how they actually are. And then?!

And then there’s a crack emerging from the underground, a black hole that contrasts with the ever-unchanging yellow sea. A blade that suddenly juts out from the earth and sharply cuts through the uniform yellow sea, simultaneously altering the monotony of Michele’s life forever.

This is the beginning of ‘I'm Not Scared’. A story of children and adults, of innocence and evil, of friendship and cruelty, it is the world of prepubescent age seen through the eyes of the protagonist: Michele, who spends his tenth summer in a secluded farmhouse in the middle of the Apulian countryside in the 70s. During one of his escapades with his friends, Michele discovers a pit, and inside he finds Filippo, a strange, battered child, almost blind and chained. Slowly, Michele befriends his peer and tries to free him, unaware that the ‘grown-ups’ who are so cruel and have hidden that child in that pit are his very own parents, in collaboration with a mysterious ‘boogeyman’ from the north.

Based on a novel by Niccolò Ammaniti, Salvatores crafts a film that nods in form to Italian neorealism, and in content to Stephen King's 'Stand by Me' (brought to the screen by Bob Reiner in 1986), while always maintaining the typical Salvatorean style.

One of the film’s themes is the dimension of the fantastical that children are bearers of in order to overcome fear and endure the truth. Even though the film is very realistic in its execution of scenes, there are openings to the world of fairy tales precisely through the eyes of children and through the somewhat naive fairy tales that Michele invents to 'not be afraid' (in the early scenes when he must pass a test of courage) and for when he cannot explain the inexplicable (the child in the pit is his crazy and evil twin that his father lacked the courage to kill).

And so Salvatores plays with contrasts and inversions: life and death, again that black hole that inverts its function, from a burial pit (Filippo believes he is dead) to a new womb from which to be reborn by Michele’s hand; Michele who begins his involuntary (?) metamorphosis when he stumbles into the hole and then ultimately takes Filippo’s place, dying in his stead (almost physically) in the end.

A film about the randomness of encounters, the subsequent knowledge, and the exchanges finally, and so the director plays with opposites and inverses: Yellow wheat - black hole, good black boy - crazy blonde boy, Apulian, Milanese.

A film fit for children (excellent shots in the wheat with the steady cam), told by children (all the debuting young actors are perfect) that speaks of adult stories directed at an adult audience.

The white sheet colored with others’ stories can this time truly be the album of memories for all the former children: ‘I’m not scared’ is obviously a ‘magic formula’ with which the young protagonist tries to exorcise fears while facing his small adventures, but perhaps, deep down it is also a hope, that fear of growing up and becoming like those so evil adults.