The story charts the controversial rise of a gang of Neapolitan youngsters - known as the paranza - who were originally recruited to act as hitmen by the Camorra. Fifteen years old fearless boys with innocent nicknames, branded shoes, normal families, names of girlfriends tattooed on their skin, no trust in school or institutions. Teenagers with no tomorrow, no hope, not afraid of jail nor death. Their only chance is to bet on everything they possess right now. If they want money, they need to go out and get it. They go off on their scooters, take over the drug market, shoot satellite antennas, defy the godfathers of Naples, spread terror and fear in the city's streets.
These power-hungry adolescents are as trigger happy with a real AK-47 as they are on their PlayStations. Paranza is a term that belongs to the sea: fishing boats with lights tricking small fishes with no hope to survive. This is a tale of kids darting through life, through adolescences "tricked by light" as a paranza. Saviano enters relentlessly in this reality of today, opening and shading light over it with a wonderful tale of innocence and subjugation.
La Paranza dei Bambini (Piranhas) is Claudio Giovannesi's film adaptation of Robert Saviano Gomorrah's bestseller. Ambitious, charismatic 15-year-old Nicola and his mates go from being petty thieves to gun-toting gangsters virtually overnight.
As the gangs' older generations are locked away in prison, the gangsters become younger and younger. The baby-faced protagonists struggle with family, peer pressure and romance, all while swaggering haplessly into a bloody war to control their streets. With almost anthropological detail about the boys' lives, fashions and tragically macho rituals, the film nods at genre classics like City of God and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, while staking out its own complex, thrilling territory.
Nicola and his friends are fifteen years old. They want to make money, buy cool clothes and brand new scooters. They play with weapons and ride around the city to take power in the district of Sanità. With the illusion of bringing justice to the neighborhood, they chase good through evil. They love each other like brothers, they don't fear prison nor death, knowing their only chance is to risk everything, now. They experience war with the irresponsibility of adolescence, but their criminal activities soon lead them to the irreversible sacrifice of love and friendship.
La Paranza dei Bambini (Piranhas) tells of the relationship between adolescence and the criminal lifestyle: the impossibility of experiencing the more important feelings of adolescence, love and friendship, in a life of crime. The film shows how a fifteen year old and his friends of the same age lose their innocence. The decision by the protagonist, Nicola, to pursue a criminal lifestyle slowly becomes irreversible and all- consuming, requiring the sacrifice of his first love and of friendship.
la-paranza-1024x391Experiencing the basic feelings of adolescence in the context of a criminal lifestyle is not possible: the need to do so comes forcefully to the fore in the protagonist, but can no longer be satisfied. Although the path to the underworld is not an innate desire in youngsters, arising as a consequence of widespread illegality, the film does not wish to represent a sociological point of view. Claudio Giovannesi chooses the point of view of the youngsters, without judging them, and show their adolescent feelings in relation to the criminal lifestyle and the ambition of power: the narration of the criminal arc is always in relation to the story of their emotions, the friendships and loves that are destined to fail precisely because of the criminal lifestyle.
Despite the protagonists being fifteen years of age, they are forced into a daily relationship with death, viewing it as a very real possibility: they experience the ambition of conquest and choose war irresponsibly. The youngster's desire for power also hides the naive paradox, typical of their age, of wanting to do good through evil: the dream of a just power, the illusion of an ethical crime syndicate. Children kill fathers, replace them, and, in order to do so, are forced to shorten the time of their development, to sacrifice carelessness, to consider death or jail as very real and daily possibilities.
These power-hungry adolescents are as trigger happy with a real AK-47 as they are on their PlayStations. Paranza is a term that belongs to the sea: fishing boats with lights tricking small fishes with no hope to survive. This is a tale of kids darting through life, through adolescences "tricked by light" as a paranza. Saviano enters relentlessly in this reality of today, opening and shading light over it with a wonderful tale of innocence and subjugation.
La Paranza dei Bambini (Piranhas) is Claudio Giovannesi's film adaptation of Robert Saviano Gomorrah's bestseller. Ambitious, charismatic 15-year-old Nicola and his mates go from being petty thieves to gun-toting gangsters virtually overnight.
As the gangs' older generations are locked away in prison, the gangsters become younger and younger. The baby-faced protagonists struggle with family, peer pressure and romance, all while swaggering haplessly into a bloody war to control their streets. With almost anthropological detail about the boys' lives, fashions and tragically macho rituals, the film nods at genre classics like City of God and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, while staking out its own complex, thrilling territory.
Nicola and his friends are fifteen years old. They want to make money, buy cool clothes and brand new scooters. They play with weapons and ride around the city to take power in the district of Sanità. With the illusion of bringing justice to the neighborhood, they chase good through evil. They love each other like brothers, they don't fear prison nor death, knowing their only chance is to risk everything, now. They experience war with the irresponsibility of adolescence, but their criminal activities soon lead them to the irreversible sacrifice of love and friendship.
La Paranza dei Bambini (Piranhas) tells of the relationship between adolescence and the criminal lifestyle: the impossibility of experiencing the more important feelings of adolescence, love and friendship, in a life of crime. The film shows how a fifteen year old and his friends of the same age lose their innocence. The decision by the protagonist, Nicola, to pursue a criminal lifestyle slowly becomes irreversible and all- consuming, requiring the sacrifice of his first love and of friendship.
la-paranza-1024x391Experiencing the basic feelings of adolescence in the context of a criminal lifestyle is not possible: the need to do so comes forcefully to the fore in the protagonist, but can no longer be satisfied. Although the path to the underworld is not an innate desire in youngsters, arising as a consequence of widespread illegality, the film does not wish to represent a sociological point of view. Claudio Giovannesi chooses the point of view of the youngsters, without judging them, and show their adolescent feelings in relation to the criminal lifestyle and the ambition of power: the narration of the criminal arc is always in relation to the story of their emotions, the friendships and loves that are destined to fail precisely because of the criminal lifestyle.
Despite the protagonists being fifteen years of age, they are forced into a daily relationship with death, viewing it as a very real possibility: they experience the ambition of conquest and choose war irresponsibly. The youngster's desire for power also hides the naive paradox, typical of their age, of wanting to do good through evil: the dream of a just power, the illusion of an ethical crime syndicate. Children kill fathers, replace them, and, in order to do so, are forced to shorten the time of their development, to sacrifice carelessness, to consider death or jail as very real and daily possibilities.