20 Cigarettes
In someone else's hands, 20 Cigarettes could have become a gritty anti-war movie or an outright tearjerker. Instead, Aureliano Amadei opts for a middle ground for his autobiographical debut feature, which is surprisingly mainstream and sincere at the same time. Using mostly a handheld camera and a guitar-heavy soundtrack, the film's strength lies in an ability to shift comfortably from comedy to drama without political rhetoric or trivializing its characters.
(...) At 28, the self-proclaimed anarchist and anti-war demonstrator (Marchioni as Amadei) was still living at home with his hippie mother (de Rossi) when a family friend, director Stefano Rolla (Colangeli), offered him a job on a film he was starting in Iraq.
Aureliano Amadei was the only civilian survivor of the November 2003 suicide bombing at the Italian military headquarters in Nasiriyah, Iraq. (...) [The film] takes its name from the fact that chronic smoker Amadei hadn't even gone through his first pack of cigarettes in Iraq before his life changed forever.
(...) Amadei depicts his alter ego as a flawed non-hero – an ordinary man who reacts realistically in the face of horror. After the bomb goes off, his screams are almost more painful to bear than the images of his mangled body.
Natasha Senjanovic, The Hollywood Reporter
Original title: 20 Sigarette
Duration: 94 min
Dialogue: Italian
Subtitles: English
Age limit: K15
