Italian director Gabriele Salvatores (MEDITERRANEO) masterfully directs this eerie and engrossing suspense thriller involving a 10-year-old boy who lives in rural southern Italy. It is summertime and Michele (Guiseppe Cristiano) is free to spend the long sunny days riding his bike and running through the wheat fields. In fact, the wheat could be considered Michele's costar, as it often consumes the entire scope of the screen, showing how Michele plays, hides, and ponders life in the vast expanses of flowing yellow stalks. Because there are only a few other children in the village, Michele often plays alone, and one day he discovers a hole in the ground, obscured by wheat, where a boy his age is chained and imprisoned. The boy has clearly been starved and mistreated, yet Michele approaches him fearlessly and attempts to make friends with him. With the dreaminess that is a 10-year-old's truest treasure, Michele doesn't ask too many questions, nor does he draw conclusions about why the boy is in the hole, or who put him there. Through the expressions on young Michele's face, viewers can read his light questioning of human existence, human morality, and human rights. However, as the film draws on, subtly revealing shocking secrets about the adults in Michele's village, the beauty of this utterly simple yet deadly powerful plot come clear. I'M NOT SCARED is a moving film built on crystal-clear images of the Italian sun, sky, and wheat fields; strangely offset by its startling loss-of-innocence story.

Theatrical Release: APRIL 9, 2004 (NY/LA)

DVD Features:

Region 1
Keep Case
Widescreen - 2.35
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround - (unspecified)

Distributor Notes: I'm Not Scared

No one can be trusted and everyone's a suspect when a shocking secret is revealed in this hypnotic suspense thriller from the acclaimed director of the Academy Award(R)-winning MEDITERRANEO (Best Foreign Language Film, 1991). For 10-year-old Michele, the familiar routines of childhood in his idyllic southern Italian village are about to be shattered by his chance discovery of an unspeakable crime! Soon beyond the point of no return, Michele will risk everything to expose the truth ... only to learn that those he depends on the most may have the most to hide! Hailed by critics everywhere, this award-winning story of innocence and evil will have you riveted throughout ... culminating in its stunning conclusion!

Source: Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

Giuseppe Cristiano: Actor, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)
Aitana Sanchez-Gijon: Spanish Actress
Dino Abbrescia: Actor, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)
Giorgio Careccia: Actor, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)
Mattia Di Pierro: Actor, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)
Diego Abatantuono: Actor, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)

Gabriele Salvatores: Italian director

Maurizio Totti: Producer, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)
Riccardo Tozzi: Producer, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)
Giovanni Stabilini: Producer, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)
Marco Chimenz: Producer, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)

Francesa Marciano: ITALIAN ACTRESS
Niccolo Ammaniti: Screenwriter, I'M NOT SCARED (2004)

"With a taste for dark lyricism, the director delicately emphasizes the contrast between surface innocence."
"The golden desolation of summer wheat fields in southern Italy is filmed with such visual intensity in the thriller I'M NOT SCARED that its brilliance is almost blinding."
"I'M NOT SCARED, as beautiful as it is disturbing, is an acutely perceptive study of character, as revealed in relations between children and especially between children and adults."
"[H]auntingly beautiful....The cinematography is reminiscent of Terence Malick's DAYS OF HEAVEN."
"I'M NOT SCARED is a reminder of true childhood, of its fears and speculations..."
"Not since CHILDREN OF THE CORN have fields of grain done so much for a thriller."
"Leisurely paced thriller with a nostalgic streak."