The unusual Italian thriller I'm Not Scared (Io non ho paura, 2003), based on a novel by Niccolo Ammanti, is told from the point of view of a little boy Michelle (Giuseppe Cristiano) who discovers another little boy, Filippo (Mattia Di Pierro), chained in a hole in the ground near a ruin.

Michele begins visiting the boy in the hole daily, bringing him food treats & trying to communicate with him. The boy is half mad from long captivity, & half blind from perpetual darkness. He believes himself to have died & to now be buried, this being what it is like to be dead.

Slowly Michelle figures out that the boy in the hole is a kidnap victim being held for ransom, & that virtually everyone in his small rural community is in on it, including his own father. How Michelle sets out to save Filippo in such a corrupt environment where no no adult can be trusted is the basis of the suspense. But the real strength of the film is the minute by minute peformances of the children caught up in a horrific adventure.

One of many moments of startling strangeness & beauty is when Michelle first manages to get Filippo out of the hole. Blinded by sunlight & unable to walk well on his own, Michelle carries him about in the sunlight. The two boys manage to have a playful few hours in fields of hay, as though they were the most innocent & happy children on earth. At the end of this idyl, Michelle takes Filippo back to the hole, which both kids conclude is the only thing to be done.

It's a darned good film whether viewed as a fable of childhood fears & isolation, or as a literal tale of kidnapping in a country where ransom kidnappings are commonplace. It strives to be tasteful despite hard-hitting thematic material that could easily have been rendered pure exploitation. It has rightly been compared to the best films about children's lives by Francois Truffaut.

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