After a somewhat muted reception at Cannes earlier this year, Sony Pictures Classics has just released the first trailer for Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s mafia film The Traitor. In addition to Cannes, the film is currently making its way through the festival circuit, with screenings at both Toronto and New York film festivals.
Starring Pierfrancesco Favino as Tommaso Buscetta, a real-life figure, and the first Mafia boss to become an informant on the Nostra Costa in the early 80s, Bellocchio’s film appears to the type of time-spanning gangster film that is rarely seen these days. In addition to Favino, Luigi Lo Cascio, Fausto Russo Alesi, and Maria Fernanda Cândido co-star.
Bellocchio has been a staple of Italian filmmaking since the mid-60s with his first film Fists in the Pocket. His previous film was 2016’s Sweet Dreams staring Bérénice Bejo, which also received lukewarm reviews.
Check out the trailer below.
THE TRAITOR starts in the early 1980’s, when an all-out war rages between Sicilian mafia bosses over the heroin trade. Tommaso Buscetta, a made man, flees to hide out in Brazil. Back home, scores are being settled and Buscetta watches from afar as his sons and brother are killed in Palermo, knowing he may be next. Arrested and extradited to Italy by the Brazilian police, Buscetta makes a decision that will change everything for the Mafia: he decides to meet with Judge Giovanni Falcone and betray the eternal vow he made to the Casa Nostra.
Sony Pictures Classics will release the film sometime in early 2020.