Director’s Commentary

      The development of this film around an actual event served as a pretext for me to reconstruct and relive the life of my own childhood experience. The village life of the film is in turn a depiction of the broad phenomenon of community life, inevitably accompanied by the continuous human sharing of joys and suffering.

      The story is one of numerous small solitudes, linked and bound together by shared emotions and experiences. Each individual lives openly among the others, without shame or embarrassment for their flaws, and each maintains pride and dignity in spite of a complete lack of wealth.

      The poetic and fable-like film cut is a pretext to examine a time and place where simplicity and transparency were unceasing elements of life. I have revived the simplicity of the true villagers in the film story, without further interpretive commentary. However, changing times are now inexorably altering village life. This film is an attempt to register what my own eyes actually saw as a child, and to re-examine a world brought back from the past.

The Stolen Christmas

      A sentimental thrill ride with a mix that keeps up the suspense right till the end. A voyage into the traditional Christmas of a tiny community in southern Italy serves as the background for a story of suffering and social rejection, but also of hope and good will. The film is inspired by a real event of recent decades – the theft of an elaborate and magnificent 18th century manger scene from the village church of Fontanarosa. The facts blend with fiction in a sensational plot. Fortunato is an ordinary farm laborer forced into an extraordinary act. To save his daughter Filomena he commits the ultimate sacrilege – he steals the nativity scene. In a supernatural appearance, a broken but lively shepherd left over from the theft, named Noč, gives a helping hand to Filomena’s recovery. But Fortunato is ruined by remorse and he eventually reaches the point of turning himself in and confessing. Then comes the surprise....

      Master craftsman Guiseppe Ferrigno assumes a key role when he comes to join the life of the village. The result for us is a true insider’s view of the work of the famous nativity scene art of Naples.

Film Details