Looking through the program of the Fantasy Film Festival 2017, Sicilian Ghost Story by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza was the film sounding most promising and - to be honest, if you liked the trailer, you will like the movie too. Here, you get exactly what you expect. The story is a classic Romeo and Julia tragedy but with a gloomy thriller element. Luna loves her horse-riding classmate Giuseppe, a golden boy, although their families share a mutual hate. Their love is star-crossed: Giuseppe's dad works as a 'grass' and one day the Mafia kidnaps his son to put him to silence. While everyone abandons him, Luna, evidently sharing some character traits with Shakespeare's Juliet, will go above her limits to save him.

The bond between Luna and Giuseppe is the strongest emotional connection in the film especially in contrast to the other characters (Luna and her parents, Giuseppe's parents, the abductors) – highlighted by the fact that the only actual scene in which we see them together is the opening scene. Their love for each other, which is ready to defy evil forces, develops an incredible attraction force. When Giuseppe realizes through the letter by Luna that he must survive this because there is still a shining light of hope in his dead-end situation, the film affects you directly at your open heart, and due to the thriller story, it never gets cheesy. This one is a prime example for an extraordinary outstanding sequence which would even deserve 10 pts.

Mythological references and allusions to myriad European myths and fairy tales play a role in the imagined world Luna creates in which she is still able to rescue Giuseppe. A better world that seems to lie under the saturnine reality, where there is still something worth living for. Other symbols like the lake, the dark forest or the owl (a direct reference to Ovid's passage on Progne and Tereus, I guess) intensify the strong bound between Luna and Giuseppe and connects the two teens. By playing a significant role in Lunas world of thought, these elements are kind of soothing in contrast to the sad reality and give the film a magical touch.

Obviously, the Shakespearian love story is the centerpiece of the film, but on the other hand it also revolves around a social theme which is too often shrouded in silence: The threat and power of the Mafia and the impact it has on a normal life. There is one special scene where Luna and her best friend Loredana spread papers saying: Giuseppe has disappeared and what are you doing about it? – this is a good question. Everyone knows that these inhuman, devastating crimes happen but they all seem to be oblivious about it or even don't care. How can a society simply accept that they are powerless? The film takes a subversive approach here. Despite the pretended ignorance in society and despite all obstacles, heroine Luna does not abandon Giuseppe. By this love story and its cosmic proportions, Grassadonia and Piazza create a monument for one of the fates of the innocent Mafia victims in Sicily which are still there like ghosts haunting the present (or not, because society is silent about it).

Grassadonia and Piazzathis and their cinematographer Luca Bigazzi tell the story in beautiful pictures reminding me of Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales. Every scene here could be taken out as a film still standing on its own looking like some impressionistic painting.

Beside the visual beauty and the richness of metaphors and symbols, the sound design is conspicuous too. The piano-based music score by Austrian musician Anton Spielmann and his wifes' band Soap&Skin is only sparely used throughout the film, but when it appears, it really pushes the film on an elevated level and significantly underlines the longing of Luna and Giuseppe to each other. Soap&Skin contributed two heart-touching songs to the film which capture the sound of love, while the creepy sound design – for example the water drops or the woofing of the dog, symbolizing the Mafia danger - foreshadows the ending.

I had some problems with those parts of the film which completely play in Luna's fantasy world. Lengthy dream sequences where Luna imagines that she rescues Giuseppe felt pointless and do not push the storyline forward. Some of them especially those near the end of the film were a bit redundant, even inscrutable but others may find pleasure in them too. I definitely don't. There is also a dialogue between Luna and Nino, a friend of Loredana, who explains in an almost Rousseauish way what kind of place Sicily could be without humans. This felt a bit sudden and misplaced at first glance, but in the logic of the film it makes sense: Under all this human pettiness is still a paradise-like island full of magic caves, lakes and animals where once the gods resided and love is still reachable. There is hope that these gods will return one day to stop the cruelty. And the final scene may give a glimpse at this!

All in all, there is much to discover in Sicilian Ghost Story. I highly recommend watching the film in a cinema on a big screen (if possible), so that the intensity of the love story between Luna and Giuseppe and the power of the films' visual language can take full effect. A cold Mafia abduction versus endless love, narrated in powerful mystic and cosmic visuals – this is the magical mixture Sicilian Ghost Story offers, although it has some lengths and gets tangled up in its own conceptions sometimes. Beside this, the film is probably the most interesting and ambitious entry of the Fantasy Film Festival 2017 and stays in your head a couple of days after you watched it.

8 pts.