Female Film Critics 24/375
Award-winning documentarian Kim Longinotto’s latest celebration of the lives on women focuses on Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia with a scintillating exploration not just of Battaglia’s career but of the crime syndicate that was her frequent subject.
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The brutal atrocities of life and death under the Mafia have rarely been captured in such a riveting way as they were by acclaimed Italian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, the fascinating subject of filmmaker Kim Longinotto’s engrossing documentary, Shooting the Mafia. Battaglia’s photos encompassed the gamut of Sicilian life starting in the early 1970s, but the vast majority focused on violent Mafia crimes and their impact on the people of Palermo. Battaglia acknowledges that making a living documenting terrifying violence and receiving death threats, took an emotional toll, but she rarely let fear stop her. She knew she was being watched, and she learned quickly how to cough to conceal the click of her camera at the victims’ funerals.
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Besides being a compelling portrait of famed photojournalist Letizia Battaglia and the forces she stood up to in Sicily, Shooting the Mafia is chilling, timely piece of journalism about the far reaching tentacles of corruption and how it systematically ruins innocent lives and decimates societies. It is a chilling, powerful film with contemporary relevance.
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Battaglia had a fearlessness that is powerfully feminist, and the viewers experience her complicated perspective as an Italian woman with a passion for her work. We are drawn into her conflicted feelings about a subject matter that, at its core, expresses violence, cruelty. and pain. Shooting the Mafia is imperfect, but it shines a light on a complicated woman and truly compelling artist.
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