Mario Martone brings Eduardo De Filippo’s play Il Sindaco del Rione Sanità to the big screen, a story the director sets in the present day, using the text as an opportunity to continue to investigate reality. The protagonist, Antonio Barracano, is a “man of honour” who distinguishes between “decent people and scoundrels”; around him flourishes a fierce, ambiguous and pained humanity, where good and evil confront each other in every character, where the two cities people always speak about in Naples (the legal and the criminal) clash in an encounter neither can win.
This particular version of Naples is home to Antonio Barracano, the young, vigorous and tattooed Mayor of Rione Sanità who plays by his own rules; a paternal figure who oversees the licit and illicit activities unfolding within the city.