Italian director Matteo Garrone is a reliable crusher of hopes and aspirations. In his 2008 breakthrough crime drama Gomorrah, two fresh-faced Neapolitan youngsters aspire to emulate the mobsters they’ve seen portrayed in American gangster movies: they end up being shot by a bunch of pot-bellied mafia grandpas in flip-flops, and carted off by a digger.
Garrone’s 2019 retelling of Pinocchio had the titular wooden boy join a caravan of children headed for a mythical Land of Toys – only to be transformed into a donkey, crippled in a circus show, and thrown into the sea. Wide-eyed boys who dare to dream ending up as landfill is such a persistent theme in the 54-year-old Roman film-maker’s works, it’s probably quite useful that the two teenage protagonists of his most recent project weren’t familiar with his back catalogue before they signed up.
