It has just been released in theaters in Italy and will soon be distributed in the U.S. and Canada by Capital Motion Pictures, under the English title The Healer. The Mouth of the Soul is a precious little film, directed by Palermo-born Giuseppe Carleo (making his debut in a fiction feature) and set in an unusual Sicily, which contrasts the seascapes with the rural, almost “alpine” landscapes of the hinterland.
It is the post-World War II period, and Giovanni (played by Italian-Iranian actor Maziar Firouzi) is a veteran who, after fighting, has just returned to his village perched in the mountains. He has saved his own life, but something dark is haunting him, and the only way to get rid of it seems to be to meet an elderly “maara,” i.e., a “sorceress” and healer from the folk tradition. She initiates him into magic by teaching him that that pain can be turned into an asset by using it to help others. In his journey, however, Joseph will have to deal with the Church, the Mafia, and even his own family, until the roots of his darkness are revealed and brought to consciousness.
The film is inspired by a true story and shows us for the first time some fascinating and very interesting aspects of the popular magical tradition of rural Sicily, for which the screenplay was advised by anthropologist Elsa Guggino, author of La magia in Sicilia and Il corpo è fatto di sillabe. And if in the history of cinema the theme of “magic” has almost always been treated in fantasy or horror, it has the merit of offering us a new and original slant, while explaining how the local peasant culture, in its millenary wisdom, has learned to “cure” and bring back to itself traumas, obsessions and behaviors considered “deviant.”
The cast, almost entirely made up of Sicilians, features alongside Firouzi actresses Marilù Pipitone as Giovanni’s wife and Serena Barone as the sorceress, and involved local workers and alumni of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
Produced by Tancredi Vinci, Rita Vinci and Giuseppe Carleo for Favorita Film in association with El Deseo, with the contribution of the Ministry of Culture – General Direction Cinema and Audiovisual and the Sicilian Region – Sicily Film Commission.
The article The Mouth of the Soul / The Healer, story of a Sicilian “magician” arrives in the U.S. comes from TheNewyorker.
