Anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano is
to make his debut as a film director with an animated feature
based on a comic he co-authored on his early-life experience
with the violence of the Neapolitan Mafia and how exposing them
irrevocably changed his life.
The cartoon, Sono Ancora Vivo ((I'm Still Alive) is taken from
the graphic novel of the same name 43-year-old Saviano wrote and
Israeli comics artists Asaf Hanuka drew, Variety reported
Monday.
It will be Saviano's first cinema work on the Camorra since
Matteo Garrone's 2008 film Gomorrah, taken from Saviano's
bestelling expose' of the same name that forced him into
round-the-clock police protection.
Sono Ancora Vivo delves into how the writer's life was
transformed after he lifted the lid on the Naples Mob and in
particular the bloody and powerful Casalesi clan whose death
threats earned him his life with a constant police escort that
has inevitably meant an existence almost on the run from the
Camorra.
After the film of Gomorrah, which won the second prize at the
2008 Cannes Film Festival, Saviano's life became even more
protected and he found it hard to keep up an ordinary family
existence.
Gomorra, a play on Camorra, later inspired a TV series of the
same name which was an international hit.
Hanuka is one of Israel's top cartoonists and worked on Ari
Felman's 2008 reflection on the war in Lebanon in 1982, Waltz
with Bashir, which won the 2009 Golden Globe for best animated
feature.
Sono Ancora Vivo is an international coproduction of MAD
Entertainment and Lucky Red (Italy), GapBusters (Belgium) and
SIPUR (Israel).
It has been written by Saviano with Alessandro Rak, Filippo
Bologna, and Stefano Piedimonte.
The project will be presented in Bordeaux during the upcoming
Cartoon Movie Festival which will run from Tuesday to Thursday,
March 7-9, in the French city.
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