– VENICE 2020: Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio return to fiction film with a story of fatherly love set in the cruel, illegal world of exploited farm labourers

Salvatore Esposito in Una promessa
Nine years on from Seven Acts of Mercy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio are making their return to fiction film with Una promessa [+see also:
trailer
interview: Gianluca and Massimiliano D…
film profile], a work set in the world of illegally hired farm labourers exploited in the fields of southern Italy. The brothers tell the heart-breaking story of a father and son devastated by a great tragedy and forced to accept all manner of humiliations in order to survive. This second work by the Turin-based duo (who travelled to the Lido back in 2015 with their documentary River Memories [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) is the only Italian title competing in the 17th edition of Giornate degli Autori, unfolding within the 77th Venice International Film Festival.
The film’s lead is Salvatore Esposito (Gomorrah’s ruthless Genny Savastano), who steps into the new shoes (for him, at least) of a modern-day slave. We’re in Apulia, and Giuseppe is a loving father and husband, but he’s no longer able to carry out his work as a stone breaker in a quarry, owing to a terrible eye injury. As such, it’s up to his wife Angela (Antonella Carone) to leave home in the dead of…
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