Sons of Honor (2020)

Directed by: Sophia Luvara | 86 minutes | documentary

Anyone who assumes that the mafia is a military operating company of close-knit families will be disappointed after seeing ‘Sons of Honour’. More than its mediagenic Sicilian sister organizations, the ‘ndrangheta, or the Calabrian mafia and the main subject of this Dutch-Italian co-production, is a traditional criminal organization born of poverty, in which skittish young men are forced to do the dirty work for the bosses. Those young men are Pierpaolo, Simone, Bader and Reda, and documentary maker Sophia Luvarà won their trust.

At least: Luvarà, who grew up in Calabria, a medical biologist who learned the film trade through a course, was given unlimited access to their youth home by the judge. After all, the young convicts are charged with (involvement in) murder, and Luvarà follows them in their daily life. So unadulterated that it threatens to become boring, but the detention of mafia helpers is not boring, rather hopeless. There is both laughter and cursing, in all cases like belching with a toothache. ‘Life is structured and homely – when we see them eating pizza or playing a game together […]. But every now and then the heavily secured entrance comes into view or we follow a session in the courtroom’, according to the press kit.

Visually ‘Sons of Honour’ is in order, dramaturgically extremely bare – deliberately scant. Sometimes you can hear Luvarà asking muffled questions while zooming in on the face of one of the guys, average Southern Italians it seems. They are not followed from a gut-mensch perspective, served ready for Northern European cinemas, but from the show don’t tell principle, in which the subjects and characters are carefully exposed, like beating organs during a medical procedure. What seems inexperience of the maker is in fact wisdom: this dish deserves to be prepared pure, with natural ingredients from a very dry climate.