Filming Begins in Sicily on 'Oliva Denaro', Drawn From Franca Viola's Story
Cristina Comencini directs Palomar's adaptation of Viola Ardone's novel, shooting in Sampieri, Scicli, Ragusa and Monterosso Almo around a heroine modelled on the Alcamo woman who refused a reparatory marriage.
On 26 December 1965, according to the reconstruction published alongside the filming news, Filippo Melodia — described as a known mobster, the nephew of a local clan boss and Franca Viola's former fiancé — broke into her family's flat in Alcamo with thirteen armed men. They wrecked the apartment and beat her mother. Franca, then seventeen, was taken away with her small brother Mariano, who clung to his sister's legs and would not let go. The boy was released a few hours later. Franca was held for seven days, first in a country cottage, then in the house of Melodia's sister, and at the end of that week she was raped.
That is the history behind "Oliva Denaro", whose shooting began in recent days at Sampieri, in the municipality of Scicli, where the crew filmed at Punta Pisciotto. The film is produced by Palomar, the company of Carlo Degli Esposti, and directed by Cristina Comencini. It is adapted from Viola Ardone's novel published by Giulio Einaudi Editore in 2021. The locations are divided among Monterosso Almo, Ragusa, Sampieri and Scicli. The municipal administration led by mayor Mario Marino has welcomed the project, with the support of the Scicli Film Commission.
The protagonist is Oliva, a Sicilian adolescent modelled on Franca Viola, the young woman from Alcamo who in the 1960s refused to marry the man who had abducted and raped her and turned a personal decision into a national case. During the trial she said: "Io non sono proprietà di nessuno. Nessuno può costringermi ad amare una persona che non rispetto. L'onore lo perde chi le fa certe cose, non chi le subisce." After months of mud-slinging, insults, threats and intimidation of every kind, Melodia and his accomplices were sentenced to eleven years in prison. Franca Viola married another man and reclaimed her own life. The reparatory marriage and the crime of honour did not disappear from the Italian penal code until 1981 — fifteen years later, and, in the account given here, thanks above all to her courage and tenacity.
Palomar is the production company behind "Il Commissario Montalbano", which was shot in Scicli from 1998 to 2019. For Ardone and Comencini the new film is a second encounter with the company after "Il treno dei bambini", released in 2024 and adapted from another of the writer's novels. Comencini, born in Rome in 1956, has won three Nastri d'Argento, described in the coverage as Italy's longest-running film award; she took a degree in economics and began her cinematic career alongside her father, Luigi. Franca Viola is living and is 78 years old.
The film hands the story back to a teenager: its heroine is an adolescent, as Franca Viola was when the men came into the flat. Between that night in Alcamo and the shoot at Punta Pisciotto lie seven days of captivity, a trial, eleven-year prison terms for the convicted, a life rebuilt with another man, and a penal code amended only in 1981. The brother who clung to his sister's legs and would not let go was released within hours.