A real-life story – the mafia abduction of the 12-year-old son of an informer in 1993 – provides the jumping-off point for a film that brings a mystical, quasi-fairytale filter to a fairly grim reality. The disappearance of Giuseppe (Gaetano Fernandez) is viewed through the eyes of his schoolgirl sweetheart, Luna (Julia Jedlikowska). She sets out to discover the truth, but collides with a culture that is fortified by secrecy. The story plays out in a limbic space that is neither reality nor pure fantasy. Loaded with symbolism and heady atmospherics, it’s a chillingly off-kilter arena in which this tale unfolds, one that constantly invites us to question what and who is real.

This is a poetic and, admittedly, somewhat meandering interpretation by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza of one of the ugliest aspects of Sicily’s pervasive organised crime – the collateral cost on the lives of the innocent. But while the fantastical elements provide a distance for the audience from the bleak core of the story, they also heighten the sense of enveloping melancholy of this aching tale of thwarted first love.