Presented in a world premiere within Rome Film Fest’s Alice nella Città line-up and distributed in Italian cinemas from 14 November, courtesy of Lo Scrittoio, Federico Ferrone’s first solo directorial effort, The Best Reward, is a convincing debut which broaches burning, topical themes with great simplicity and sincerity. Ferrone previously worked in partnership with Michele Manzolini, the duo dedicating themselves to works spanning archive movies, documentaries and fiction, along the lines of Once More Unto the Breach [+lee también:
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His latest film follows the ups and downs of seventeen-year-old Mattia (Luka Zunic) who lives in a post-industrial province of northern Italy. The son of a trade unionist (Fabrizio Ferracane) and an overprotective homemaker (Giulia Valenti), Mattia is vulnerable and angry, and he expresses himself through hip-hop until the tragic death of his big brother, an event which feeds into his sense of guilt and leads him to leave school and music behind in order to work in a factory.

His friendship with his Moroccan colleague Murad (Abdessamad Bannaq) and his brother Rashid (Lawrence Hachem Ebaji), and a subsequent trip to Morocco, bring him closer to Islam, which he sees as a path towards a more meaningful life. But Mattia’s inner and family conflicts persist, slowly leading him towards isolation and radicalisation.

Maintaining a fairly linear structure, the screenplay achieves its goal: to explain how certain choices and encounters can have unforeseeable effects on our lives. We get a clear sense of how precarious the balance is between death and salvation, and how certain moments and actions – seemingly casual or irrelevant – can lead to totally different endings. The idea that radicalisation – or rather being co-opted – can happen to anyone, even a simple boy from the suburbs who might be restless and withdrawn but who isn’t all that different from his peers, is equally well demonstrated. As we might expect, it’s a process – in the film and in real life – which takes place in response to a huge void and a lack of effective social support, which is increasingly common in the “liquid” world we live in. Ferrone's directorial approach, assisted by Giampiero Rigosi and Olivier Coussemacq’s writing, relays all of this without frills and gets straight to the heart of the matter.

The Best Reward is also buoyed by some brilliant performances. Zunic conveys the perfect balance of fragility, stubbornness and obliviousness, while Bannaq and Hachem Ebaji’s characters are appropriately multifaceted and unpredictable, largely owing to the different ways in which they understand their faith. The technical crew – especially director of photography Salvo Lucchese’s camera movements and Maria Fantastica Valmori’s editing – lend just the right rhythm to this story, resulting in a pace which is sustained but never rushed.

In short, Ferrone’s is a solid work which holds the audience’s attention from the beginning right on through to the end - with modest means but with plenty to say.

The Best Reward was produced by Apapaja in collaboration with RAI Cinema.