“Iddu” – Toni Servillo, who played Roman socialite Jep Gambardella in Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning “The Great Beauty” and fellow Italian A-lister Elio Germano, star in this drama about Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro, dubbed “the last godfather” directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (“Sicilian Ghost Story”). The roles respectively being played by Servillo and Elio Germano are being kept under wraps. Sales: TBA

Elio Germano as Matteo Messina Denaro in "Iddu"



There is great anticipation and fervent curiosity for the film by the two Palermo directors, Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia , centered on the life of the boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who died last September, eight months after his arrest in January 2023 , after almost thirty years of hiding, in an alley near the private clinic La Maddalena in Palermo, in the San Lorenzo district.

The protagonists of the feature film are the actors Elio Germano , in the role of the former super fugitive, and Tony Servillo . The shots were filmed between Salemi, Selinunte, Sciacca and some interiors in Trapani, in an apartment in via Giudecca and then on the San Domenico hill.

Filmed in the summer months of June and July, the film obviously required preparation in the previous period, touching some of the most beautiful places in Western Sicily, including those near the Belice River Oriented Reserve and a few kilometers from the Selinunte Archaeological Park .
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In Salemi the set was set up throughout the historic center and in Piazza Libertà in particular.

«The crew came to the city a couple of times – says the mayor Domenico Venuti – to set up the suitable environment for all the work. They built a barber's studio with carpenters and workers for stage needs. It was a team full of people, but they didn't interact with us and worked in peace."

This is the first feature film that tells the story of the crime boss after his epochal arrest, which promises to bring to the big screen the events of his life, whose absence lasted three decades.

The film, produced by Indigo Film, was entirely shot in Western Sicily, mostly indoors, and the set involves the territories where the Castelvetrano boss mainly exercised his criminal power. Trapani and Palermo were the locations of the castings for the extras which took place in mid-April.

Among the other actors, Filippo Luna also stands out, already involved in Màkari 3, the detective television series starring Claudio Gioè, and Tea Bruno, a 26-year-old from Palermo who played Letizia Battaglia's daughter in the fiction "Only for passion - Letizia Battaglia photographer" gone broadcast last year on Rai Uno.

Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia, directors and screenwriters, had already dealt with the story of the disappearance and murder of Giuseppe Di Matteo in "Sicilian Ghost Story", a 2017 film, a dramatic news episode from 1996 relevant within the complex of crimes of which Messina Denaro was accused. The title of the film, due out in the next few months, is Iddu .

Initially, however, there was talk of "Letters to Catello", then changed, as the directors themselves wrote on social media. Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza spoke of the «farcical mystery of a thirty-year absence at the center of a whirlwind dance of characters who in the sleep of reason chase dreams that always end up turning into tragic and ridiculous nightmares».

«We worked on the screenplay of the film IDDU for two years. Thanks to Indigo Film and Rai Cinema, to Les Films du Losange which co-produces for France. Infinite gratitude to Toni Servillo and Elio Germano, with us since the beginning of the development of the project.

Thanks to a great production team and a fantastic artistic and technical cast. They accompanied us on a happy and passionate journey, which began in Sicily and ended in Rome", we read in a July post on their Facebook page.

The first title evoked that of a book from several years ago, from 2008 to be precise: "Letters to Suetonius. The head of Cosa Nostra tells his story",edited by the Trapani writer Salvatore Mugno.

The protagonist of the volume was, in fact, the multiple murderer belonging to the massacre wing of Cosa Nostra and super-fugitive mafia boss hunted by all the police, Matteo Messina Denaro - Diabolik for friends - who discovered himself as a "writer": author of letters like "streams of consciousness "revelators of a baroque literary disposition.

His mysterious interlocutor was a politician (perhaps also an agent of the Secret Service hidden under the name of "Svetonio") to whom the unaware boss, heir of Riina and Provenzano, confidently addressed himself by signing with the name of "Alessio".

Matteo - Alessio's correspondence, meticulously argued, sometimes proud and at the same time strategically victimized, expressed the condition of a certain Sicilian mafia suspended between the ancient peasant phase and the metropolitan and transnational one. Tonino Vaccarino, former mayor of Castelvetrano, was Suetonius, in the intense correspondence with Alessio.

Mouths are now closed about this work created with great discretion, almost as a counterbalance to a story of immense hype, which will capture, in places characterized by landscapes coveted for their innocent beauty, mysterious and dark features linked to the existence of the boss of the massacres , mafia boss of Castelvetrano.

Nice. Elio Germano as Denaro is a great idea.

Look forward to watch that.