Review: The Mafia Only Kills in Summer, 2015, dir. Pierfrancesco Diliberto

“Nun sacciu, non vidi, nun ceru, e si ceru, durmivu”, the old Sicilian adage tells us; “I know nothing, I didn’t see anything, I wasn’t there, and if I was there, I was sleeping.” Had the sage responsible for concocting this well-worn proverb been fonder of brevity, it might make a good tagline for Italian actor and filmmaker Pierfrancesco Diliberto’s directorial debut, the coming-of-age period comedyThe Mafia Only Kills in Summer. Diliberto’s film is both a chronicle of mob rule in Palermo from the 1970s to the 1990s and a quiet critique of the code of silence adhered to by city locals when it comes to all things Cosa Nostra. In between these two axes, or perhaps layered upon them, he even finds room to squeeze in a sly satire of sensationalist media. Suffice to say that his work isn’t lacking for material.” (Via Movie Mezzanine.)