The Traitor

The Traitor is a 2019 internationally co-produced biographical crime drama film co-written and directed by Marco Bellocchio, about the life of Tommaso Buscetta, the first Sicilian Mafia boss who was treated by some as pentito. Pierfrancesco Favino stars as Buscetta, alongside Maria Fernanda Cândido, Fabrizio Ferracane, Fausto Russo Alesi and Luigi Lo Cascio. The Traitor premiered in competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, and was released theatrically in 23 May by 01 Distribution, and on 30 October in France by Ad Vitam Distribution. It received positive reviews from critics, and earned $8.9 million worldwide at the box office. Plot In the 1980s, the period of maximum power of the mafia clans in Italy, the Cosa Nostra of Palermo and Corleonesi factions (headed by Totò Riina) competing for the drug market, maintaining a facade of friendship and collaboration. Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), affiliated with Cosa Nostra and known as the "boss of two worlds", senses the imminent war between families and decides to move to Brazil, where he can follow his business in peace under the name or Roberto Felici. As he predicted, after his departure tensions begin and the first victims of the feud fall, including two of his sons and his brother. But Buscetta is captured and tortured by the Brazilian police. The mafioso understands that he is facing certain death when his extradition to Italy is agreed. Unexpectedly, judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi) offers him a way out: to collaborate with the police and the judiciary, enjoying the protection of the state. Buscetta, who for some time no longer recognizes himself in the violent and unscrupulous actions of the Cosa Nostra and linked to an idea of the mafia that protects poor people, decides to accept, also to take revenge for the reprisals and persecutions against him and his family.