(Italian with English subtitles)

Italy:1978 - kids bike race up dirt roads surrounded by wheat fields in the heat of summer in Southern Italy. They arrive at an abandoned house in ruins, miles from nowhere. The last racer - a prepubescent girl -must succumb to the whim of the winner. He wants her to expose herself. Ten year old Michele steps in to take her place. He is the moral conscience and adventurer of the group. He agrees to accept a dare risking life and limb to walk a narrow high beam spanning the framework of the building. He is willing to suppress his fears and embrace the allure of the unknown. The exploration of the abandoned house becomes his next task - one that leads to a blurring of the lines between good and evil - between moral responsibility and duty to his family.

"I’m Not Scared" is a remarkable examination of childhood that never deviates from Michele’s child’s eye view of his world. His relationships to his peers, and their relationship to their environment are pitch perfect. Likewise, the moral character each exhibits is a reflection of their parents. The labor of their forebears who once tilled the soil around them has been taken over by technology. Reapers perform the tasks that were once done by them . Jobs and money to money food are scarce, yet Michele’s parents protect him from the ills that plague them. Amidst this poverty, kids still remain kids, and Michele is the biggest kid of all, wanting to satisfy his untainted sense of wanderlust - to see what is beyond the invisible divide that separates his peasant community from the world at large. So when he goes back to the abandoned house, without his friends, he leaves no stone unturned. He discovers a chained, bedraggled, unwashed, starving boy, hidden away in a makeshift dirt cellar devoid of light. Unsure of who put him there or why, Michele secretly brings him food and water until the boy gets back some of his strength. He sees Michele as his guardian angel, Michele sees him as a mystery. Michele becomes painfully aware of the his parents’ role in the boy’s life with the arrival of strangers and their obsession with the news on TV. Soon he swayed by the dictates of his ten year conscience.

Director Gabriele Salvatores carefully strikes a balance between Michele’s secret world and the equally secretive world of the adults who plot and scheme in whispers behind closed doors looking for a quick fix for their poverty. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Michele withdraws from the world of childhood and eases his way into the maelstrom brewing around him, until he is willing to take on the role that fate has cast his way. Michele is a hero but his heroics are not over the top. They are scaled down to the size of the boy and never strain for credibility. "I’m not Sacred" is one of the finest films about children trying to bridge the gap between their waning innocence and the murky morality of the world that awaits them once it’s gone.

Copyright 2004

"Forbidden Games" (1951) - (Fr. with Eng. subtitles) Two children make a game out of burying dead animals to cope with ravages of war in the French countryside during WWII. From Director Rene Clement.

"Mediterraneo" (1991) - (Ital. with Eng. subtitles) A light hearted look at WWII about Italian sailors stranded on a Greek island who woo the women left to mind the homestead while their men are off fighting the war.