A Ciambra [Sub: Eng]

Writer-director Jonas Carpignano displays a fine feeling for the simple joys and blunt sorrows of life at the margins, and a great regard for his compelling young star.

Carpignano is far less interested in the epic mechanics of how the flat screen TV falls off the truck, and far more on the personal daily details of the people inhabiting this world.

It's a neo-realist study of a kid with special gifts for leadership, daring and friendship. And for stealing everything in sight.

Through Tim Curtin's kinetic handheld camerawork, Carpignano immerses the viewer in Pio's experience.

Viewers interested in a rarely-documented side of life will get caught up in this frank portrayal of a boy who's not sure how to be a man.

While A Ciambra is not a happy story, its vigor and authenticity deliver a sort of joy.

Tim Curtin's handheld camerawork and Dan Romer's score are restless and energetic. Pio Amato, who is in almost every frame, makes for a charismatic lead. He is likable enough for the viewer to overlook his low-level lawlessness.

[The] one-foot-in-reality approach immediately lends the drama a sense of lived-in, often uncomfortable authenticity.

Carpignano's mission seems to be to give the marginalized and voiceless a chance to represent their own stories.

The film's rough vitality, fueled partly by Amato's ebullient relatives playing versions of themselves, can't mask those moments of contrivance, but it's absorbing all the same.

A fascinating and considered study of outsider tensions, though a third-act turn that forces Pio to pick a side hammers the point home a little too hard.

In Pio, Carpignano has found a natural star...