The Stolen Children (AKA il Ladro di Bambini)

Film Details

Cast

Valentina Scalici, Enrico Lo Verso

Technical Details

Star Review

Gianni Amelio has been described as Scorseseian in his all-consuming cinephilia, a fact lovingly documented in his 2004 memoir ‘Il vizio del cinema’. Having worked as assistant to such notable Italian directors as Liliana Cavani and Vittorio De Seta, he was determined to become an auteur in the mould of the filmmakers of the French New Wave.
The Stolen Children is an affecting road movie stretching the length of il bel paese. It tells of a young police officer who accompanies two children to an orphanage near Rome after their mother is arrested for forcing her young daughter into prostitution. Initially resistant to the children’s sullenness, he comes to love them and they come to trust him. They do not know that is has been assumed he has abducted them.
Uncompromising in its depiction of the marginalised of Italy in the 1990s, the film, like many road movies, follows the inner journey of the main protagonist who, through his relationship with the children, finds himself putting his own beliefs into question. A key Italian film of the 1990s.

Pasquale Iannone on 16th April 2007

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Film Description

Aka Il Ladro di Bambini. A tragic but heartwarming true story of childhood trauma and the building of trust, as two children, taken from their abusive mother, journey southwards with an accompanying policeman, from Milan to Sicily.

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