Movie Review: ‘A Ciambra’

Review by Caitlin Zeigler

Pio (Pio Amato) is a 14-year-old teen who smokes, drinks, steals and curses. He doesn’t have much of an education and he steals to help support his family. He takes after his older brother, Cosimo (Damiano Amato), who mostly steals cars. They have a large family in a small Romani community, where everyone pretty much lives like gypsies. Pio’s best friend is an African man, Ayiva (Koudous Seihon), who’s always looking out for him and helping him. However, Pio’s family thinks African people are less than. Pio is good at stealing, for the most part, because he can easily go through the territories between the Romani, Africans and Italians.

Pio was just living his life doing what he knows how to do, until his brother and father get arrested. He then has to step up to take care of his large family as the “man” in charge. When he was stealing before, he had help from his brother. When he has to steal on his own, he has to transport the stolen stuff and make the sale. If he doesn’t, his family doesn’t eat. When his father and brother get released, Pio decides to steal from a well-known and powerful Italian family. Cosimo tells Pio that the only way to fix his mistakes is to betray his friend, Ayiva. Pio wanted to prove that he could step into his big brother’s shoes, until he realizes what it takes to step up.

This film is good, but they decided not to show the end result of the decisions Pio and Cosimo made. They do show that they assume life will go on as usual, but that will apply to them and you don’t know what will happen to Ayiva. There isn’t some big buildup to something happening and there isn’t some big climax. The film does show that Pio has a lot of heart and that no matter what happens, Pio and his family will continue to live their lives the only way they’ve ever known.