Philomena Esposito is of Calabrian origin, and learned to speak French at a compulsory age, on the school benches of a small town on the Côte d’Azur. Her documentary highlights the role of women in the Mafia. How is the Mafia seen by women? By those who take part in it and by those who oppose it?
The Calabrian Mafia, the “N’dranghetta” or “Honourable Society”, is more than a corporate name, it’s a state of mind. You are either born a Mafioso or you are not, but you never become one. The man, too absent, has no time to educate his children. It is the woman who passes on the Mafia spirit and who already imposes the law of silence in the home.
His approach is an insider’s view. Her aim is to explain, without judging, what the “Mafia spirit” is, and not to tell the story of the Mafia in an event-driven way.
It seeks to capture the Mafia’s voice, without any desire to denounce it, as a testimony to the way in which life is conceived from a different perspective in today’s world, and thereby shed a different light on current events that have shaken Italy.