Classmate Luna will not stop searching for her 13-year-old kidnapped classmate Guiseppi.

The Italian film “Sicilian Ghost Story,” directed by Fabio Grassadonia/Antonio Piazza is based on a real-life Mafia kidnapping of a 13-year-old son of a Mafia don who was kidnapped and held hostage to be used as leverage to make his criminal father stop cooperating with the police. The term, in Italian, seems to be “supergrass,” although, since I don’t speak Italian, I am merely relying on the subtitle term, [which was foreign to me in English.]

The young boy (Guiseppi) was held for 776 days in an attempt to get his father (whom we never see) to stop giving the police information.
The only person who still seems to be looking for the young victim is a teenaged girl Luna, his classmate. She will not give up in looking for the boy with whom she has become infatuated.

Just before Guiseppi disappeared, Luna wrote: “I lock myself in my room and dream. When I’m sad, I dream, and when I’m happy I dream. Only you can help me because it is of you I dream. If you say no, I’ll stop dreaming. If you say yes, I’ll stop dreaming, because it will be of us together.”

The forest and lake scenes are beautifully photographed, usually with the camera looking up at the trees. The underwater sequences are equally haunting.
One saying, repeated by Luna’s best friend is a bastardization of a Russian idiom that says every time there is a moment of silence in Russia, a cop is born. The friend notes that “Here, every time there is a moment of silence, a Mafiosa is born.”

Amidst the forest scenes and the gnarled roots of trees there is a drama playing out between Luna and her loving father and her cold Swiss stepmother and the authorities, who are less-than-intent on finding the young victim.