original title:
Il bambino nascosto
directed by:
cast:
screenplay:
Roberto Andò, from the novel with the same title by Roberto Andò
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
costume design:
producer:
production:
BiBi Film, Rai Cinema, with the support of Regione Lazio, Film Commission Regione Campania
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2021
film run:
110'
format:
colour
release date:
04/11/2021
festivals & awards:
Gabriele Santoro lives in a working-class neighborhood of Naples and is a piano professor. One morning, while he is shaving, a delivery man rings the doorbell, he opens the door and, before welcoming him, runs to wash his face. In that moment, a ten-year-old boy sneaks into his apartment and hides in it. “The teacher” - as he is called in the neighborhood - will only realize it late in the evening. He will recognize the intruder, Ciro, a child who lives with his parents in the same building. When asked why he escaped, Ciro does not speak. Despite that Gabriele decides to hide him in his home, engaging in a singular and tenacious challenge to Ciro’s enemies. He’ll soon discover that the child is the son of a camorrist and that, as happens to those who had their childhood denied early, Ciro doesn’t know how to express his feelings. Silent, cultured, solitary, the piano teacher is a man of hidden, secret passions. It will be up to him to teach to this child how to control his feelings and to save him away from an already written destiny. A risky game in which, after an initial hesitation, Gabriele Santoro throws himself unrestrainedly.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES:
A story set in Naples, in just a few square metres, those of the apartment in which a piano teacher keeps hidden a child he doesn’t know. A few metres in which the deep meaning of life and the possibility of loving and being loved are measured. The boy is the son of a camorrista, a mobster, and, as happens when childhood is denied, has not learned the ABC of feelings. The piano teacher is a quiet, cultured, solitary man. A man of hidden, secret passions. Music is his daemon, the gauge by which he measures everything. He will be faced with the task of the emotional weaning of a difficult child, a rebel. A risky undertaking into which, after initial hesitation, he will throw himself fully.