Synopsis
The Mafia Kills Only in Summer (La mafia uccide solo d'estate, 2013) is an Italian tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. It marks the directing debut of the comedian and TV host known as Pif, who also plays the lead and treats Sicily's darkest decades with a deadly serious sense of humour.
The story opens in late-1960s Palermo, where young Arturo grows up idolising politician Giulio Andreotti and pining after a classmate named Flora. Between birthday parties and first crushes, prosecutors and police officers keep dying. Arturo's coming of age tracks the city across thirty years, from the shootings of the late sixties to the bombings that killed magistrates Falcone and Borsellino in 1992. Cristiana Capotondi plays the grown Flora, the woman who finally pushes him to stop looking away.
What makes the film land is its nerve: it cracks jokes about the unspeakable, framing the mob through a child's logic and absurd coincidences, then sucker-punches you with real footage of the dead. If you think Coppola and a hundred mob sagas already said everything about the Sicilian Mafia, this view from below, through a boy's eyes, finds an entirely different register. Stream The Mafia Kills Only in Summer (2013) online on iFILM.
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