Starting on October 10 local time, a new film titled Letters from Sicily (Iddu‎) will be released in theaters across Italy. However, residents of the small town of Castelvetrano in western Sicily have been left out. The town's only cinema, the Marconi, has refused to screen the film and even denied permission to display its poster, as the film's protagonist, the Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, hails from this very town.

Letters from Sicily poster

The film Letters from Sicily is co-directed by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia, featuring a standout performance from Elio Germano, a double winner of Best Actor at both the Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals, alongside Tony Servillo, known for his role in The Great Beauty. The storyline revolves around a true story of an Italian agent, played by Servillo, as he pursues the Mafia boss. Germano portrays Matteo Messina Denaro, who passed away last September in a prison hospital in Rome. Once the most prominent figure of the Sicilian Mafia, Denaro had been wanted for over thirty years before being captured on January 16, 2023, near a private clinic in Palermo while undergoing cancer treatment. More details about this operation are also unveiled in the film, which competed in the main competition at this year's Venice Film Festival.

Elio Germano as Mafia boss Denaro

Tony Servillo as the agent pursuing the Mafia

During his life, Denaro dominated in Sicily, engaging in drug trafficking and other illegal activities. He also threatened Italian prosecutors and the press with bombings and boasted that the victims under his influence "could fill an entire cemetery." Although he has now passed, his influence seems to linger in his hometown of Castelvetrano, which is renowned for its olive production. In an interview with the Sicilian Daily, Salvatore Vaccarino, the owner of the cinema that refused to screen Letters from Sicily, publicly stated that he has no interest in the film and therefore will not arrange a screening.

Interestingly, Vaccarino's late father, Antonio Vaccarino, served as the town's mayor for an extended period. In the 1990s, he was imprisoned for drug trafficking but later chose to cooperate with Italian intelligence, assisting agents in tracking Denaro through a series of letters exchanged between them. The title Letters from Sicily directly refers to these correspondences.

Letters from Sicily is based on true events

Therefore, as reported by Italy's ANSA news agency quoting insider analyses, it is believed that Vaccarino's refusal to screen the film is linked to its references to his father. However, some locals express that there are still many in town who hold considerable sympathy for Denaro, suggesting that screening a film that clearly portrays him as a villain would likely face significant resistance.

Nonetheless, the current town mayor, Giovanni Lentini, has previously stated in media interviews that he would strive to persuade Vaccarino to allow Letters from Sicily to be shown at the Marconi cinema, "hoping to give the people of our town the opportunity to see this film."