Il giudice ragazzino (1994)

Sicily, 1980s. Deputy Prosecutor Rosario Livatino is assigned to investigate the Mafia in the Canicattì–Agrigento area. He believes that the center of the drug trade, previously focused on the regional capital, is shifting to this area, which is less subject to the heavy law-enforcement presence found in Palermo. The investigation also reveals that, following the death of Salvatore Cangemi, the area’s Mafia boss, a power struggle is underway between two local bosses: Antonino Forte and Giuseppe Migliore. Migliore lives above the apartment where Dr. Livatino lives with his parents. To preserve his integrity in the eyes of his fellow townspeople, the judge waits every morning for the boss to leave for work before going out, so as to avoid being seen in his company. He behaves in the same way around both Migliore and Forte whenever they might cross paths, even by chance. The investigation proceeds slowly amid procedural red tape, “moles” within the Prosecutor’s Office, and cowardly colleagues, as well as the inevitable code of silence surrounding any investigation connected to the Mafia and the worlds associated with it—politics and business. The deputy prosecutor finds few people willing to help him in earnest: two of them, Marshal Guazzelli and the elderly Judge Saetta, are murdered. Judge Livatino does not give up even when the Court of Cassation annuls the arrest warrants against the businesspeople he had painstakingly charged. Although he has a colleague sign the warrant, he orders the arrest of the boss who lives next door; the man, however, perhaps having been tipped off, evades capture and goes into hiding. Meanwhile, Livatino begins a tender relationship with his colleague, lawyer Guarnera, a legal assistant at the office of lawyer Cascio, a well-known criminal-defense attorney who often represents people accused of Mafia-related crimes. Their relationship is not easy, either professionally or within the family: when Angela meets Rosario’s parents, his mother’s barely concealed disapproval is evident. In keeping with a “traditional” mindset, she sees the young professional as too “emancipated” for her son. About a year later, Giuseppe Migliore emerges from hiding and turns himself in to the judge. Angela is the one who assists him during questioning, standing in for lawyer Cascio, who has meanwhile been arrested for aiding and abetting. Unfortunately, the arrest warrants for Migliore and Forte are not issued at the same time, leading Migliore’s “family” to suspect that Forte, who is on the losing side at that point, might cooperate with the authorities. This increases Dr. Livatino’s fear that the Mafia might retaliate, which it does on the morning of September 21, 1990, when the judge is murdered on the Canicattì–Agrigento road. Before the closing credits, Giulio Scarpati’s voice-over recites an excerpt from Dr. Livatino’s lecture on “the judge in society.”