Is it morally right to not help someone if they are a bad person? Director Mauro Mancini tries to answer this question, but limps around trying to find a satisfying answer.
Simone Segre (Alessandro Gassmann) is a Jewish-Italian doctor with daddy issues who allows a hit and run victim to die after discovering he’s a neo-nazi. Racked with the guilt that he has left three children, one of which proudly follows in his fathers goose steps, in financial ruin, he hires the eldest daughter, who is only slightly racist, to work as his cleaning lady in his gigantic apartment.
This movie wants to be deeper than it is. It starts off with a moral conundrum that could easily take our lead character down a rabbit hole of justifiable revenge. But detours into a dull, melodramatic soap opera. After losing his own father, Segre feels like he needs a father figure to balance out the universe.
Beautiful production value and cinematography do little to save this well directed and acted after-school-special that was too afraid to have a conversation about racial tension and the cause of hate but instead have an unmarried doctor metaphorically adopt three misguided orphans in hopes that they learn a lesson from their father’s death. The movie feels like it was written as a response to a dinner party game where people talked about morality.
THOU SHALT NOT HATE will screen as part of the 2021 Jewish International Film Festival’s lineup. Tickets for screenings between February 18 and March 14 are available HERE
JIFF 2021 Review – ‘Non Odiare (Thou Shalt Not Hate)’
Reviewed online (screening at JIFF 2021), February 8, 2021. Rating: TBC. Running time: 95 min.
PRODUCTION: An IntraMovies release of a Agresywna Banda, Friuli Venezia Giulia Film Commission, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo (MiBACT), Movimento Film, Notorious Pictures, Polish Film Institute, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, Rai Cinema, Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, Regiona Lazio, Roma Lazio Film Commission, Stern Pictures production. Producer: Mario Mazzarotto.
CREW: Director: Mauro Mancini. Screenplay: Davide Lisino, Mauro Mancini. Cinematography: Mike Stern Sterzynski. Editing: Paola Freddi. Music: Aldo De Scalzi Pivio.
CAST: Alessandro Gassmann, Sara Serraiocco, Luka Zunic, Lorenzo Buonora, Lorenzo Acquaviva, Gabriele Sangrigoli, Paolo Giovannucci, Cosimo Fusco.