The Stolen Caravaggio

Valeria, the young secretary of a film producer, lives a secluded life, on the same landing of an apartment block as her mother, and pens anonymous scripts for a successful screenwriter, Alessandro Pes. One day the woman is approached by a mysterious retired policeman who wants to tell her the story of a crime. Valeria is wary but captivated by his words. When she goes home she uses what she has heard to write a scenario which the producers have been waiting for anxiously: it will be Alessandro Pes’s next screenplay. The scenario goes down very well, to the point where foreign groups show an interest in financing the film and a rather elderly but revered American director is hired to make it. But that plot turns out to be a dangerous one: the Storia senza nome, or “Story without a Name”, is in fact about the mysterious theft of a famous picture by Caravaggio, The Nativity, carried out in Palermo in 1969 by the Mafia. It doesn’t take long for the consequences to surface and Valeria will find herself taking on what is an unusual role for her. (Venice International Film Festival)