The Traitor (Il Traditore)

A true story about a Mafia boss, Tommaso Buscetta, whose testimony at the largest anti-Mafia trial in history allowed the conviction of hundreds of mobsters.

In the early 1980’s, an all-out war rages between Sicilian mafia bosses over the heroin trade. Tommaso Buscetta, a made man, flees to hide out in Brazil. Back home, scores are being settled and Buscetta watches from afar as his sons and brother are killed in Palermo, knowing he may be next. Arrested and extradited to Italy by the Brazilian police, Buscetta makes a decision that will change everything for the Mafia: He decides to meet with Judge Giovanni Falcone and betray the eternal vow he made to the Cosa Nostra.

The main character is indeed a traitor from Cosa Nostra’s point of view, from the point of view of Mafia tradition, from the point of view of the past, and from the point of view of the family he belongs to. For Buscetta, betrayal is an extremely painful decision, but at the same time, it’s him rejecting a certain type of Mafia that made decisions he doesn’t agree with. But Buscetta is no hero; he’s a brave human being who wants to save his and his family’s skin, and he’s also quite conservative because he yearns for the type of Mafia that watched him grow up, which baptised him, so to speak.
Marco Bellocchio