Burning Hearts
A Romeo and Juliet-esque romance-western sets a small Italian town ablaze as two warring mafia families reignite a generations-simmering feud that will drag everybody back into a violent spiral of blood and death.
Promontory of the Gargano, Apulia, 2004: two families who have hated each other for too long have now reached a fragile truce, but the past is always haunting them. The impossible love that suddenly explodes between Andrea, son of one of the two bosses, and Marilena, wife of a fugitive and mother of his children, will drag everyone back into a violent spiral of blood and death. Sanctity and death are inextricably linked in the film, indicating a society in which revenge and settling accounts are cold rituals inherent in life, consolidated traditions. Thanks to the sublimation of a splendid black-and-white, with a severe photography, lacquered in its sculpting of bodies, Burning Hearts takes on the tones of a Western in which the Gargano is a land without law, bare and timeless. Marilena is a destabilizing apparition, almost an image from another world. She too has a personal pending account to settle. The film is inspired by the story of Rosa di Fiore, the first female witness to justice, and is therefore a tribute to those who have managed to free themselves from the suffocating embrace of organized crime, against those who wanted to erase faces and memories.
- Original Language Title: Ti Mangio Il Cuore
- Director: Pippo Mezzapesa
- Principal Cast: Elodie, Francesco Patanè, Francesco Di Leva, Lidia Vitale, Brenno Placido, Tommaso Ragno, Michele Placido
- Country: Italy
- Year: 2022
- Running Time: 115 min.
- Producer: Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima, Carlotta Calori
- Screenplay: Antonella Gaeta, Pippo Mezzapesa, Davide Serino
- Cinematographers: Michele D'Attanasio
- Editors: Giogiò Franchini
- Music: Teho Teardo
- Website: Official Film Website
- Filmography: My Own Good (2018), Pinuccio Lovero Yes I Can (2012), Il paese delle spose infelici (2011), Pinuccio Lovero - A Midsummer Death’s Dream (2008)
- Language: Italian
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- International Sales: True Colours Glorious Films