Stolen Days

Carmela is thirty, beautiful and as untamed as an horsewoman. She is jobless and struggles to get by on her own, doing small day-to-day tasks. She makes ends meet by making use of the immigrants who populate the maze of alleyways of Naples' old historic centre. A circle of hell where, even to get a residence permit, you have to pay to work

Castel Volturno, about thirty kilometers from Naples. It is September 18, 2008. A group of Camorra members burst into a tailor's shop run by African immigrants. They fire a hundred bullets indiscriminately, killing six young black men and seriously wounding another. Yussouf, a young immigrant, decided that same evening to settle the score with his uncle Moses. The man who convinced him to come to Italy. He had promised him a future as an honest craftsman but instead turned him into the cynical manager of a million-dollar cocaine ring. Entangled in their story are another African boy, Germain, who happened to be at the scene of the massacre; his girlfriend Asetù, who sings a Miriam Makeba song in public that same evening; and Suad, a prostitute whom Yussouf dreams of rescuing from her pimps.

Carmine, a sewer worker for the city of Naples, finds himself working in the vault of the Bank of Naples one morning, and he gets the idea to pull off a robbery using the sewer system. To pull off the heist, he enlists the help of Gaetano, a former robber with several years in prison; the depressed Peppe "'o' Sciomen," a legend of the Spanish Quarter and also a former prisoner for robbery; the boxer Ruocco, a former professional who ended up fighting in clandestine matches; and Striano, a photographer and robber. After completing the robbery, however, Gaetano disappears without a trace with the million-dollar loot, leaving his accomplices locked in their lair, hoping to see him reappear. As time passes, strong tensions build between the four, bringing out old misunderstandings and fracturing alliances, until a new threat looms on the horizon: the powerful boss Jannone demands a share of the loot they don't yet have.

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Three different stories pay homage to the city of Naples, seen as a capital of hospitality and multiethnic integration. In the first, a Sri Lankan waiter on his first day at work is tasked with delivering coffee to a well-known radio station, but encounters many unexpected challenges. In the second, a former Ukrainian TV presenter, wife of an imprisoned politician, is forced to come to Italy and adapt to the role of carer to a grumpy old man. In the third, a Neapolitan nanny, caring for a young Chinese boy, asks her brother to look after the child while she is away on a prize trip.

Naples told, through the centuries, in an anthology: Dadapolis by Fabrizia Ramondino and Andreas Friedrich Müller. A city always full of ferment, culture but also contradictions. In the film, however, today's city is told through the eyes of about sixty artists who live and work between Naples and abroad. A kaleidoscopic story made up of performances, songs, works of art and dialogues that narrate the transformations of a city, which never before has turned out to be so topical.