as his father fires his gun, shooting his own son in the leg. In the film's last scene, Michele's father runs with Michele in his arms in search of medical aid, as the ringleader from the North (Milan) finds him and insists he has to resume his assigned task of killing Filippo. However, Filippo appears and risks his own life to show gratitude to Michele, just as helicopters arrive and track down the ringleader trying to escape. The film ends with a repentant Pino clutching his son and Michele reaching out to Filippo. Cast Giuseppe Cristiano as Michele Amitrano Mattia Di Pierro as Filippo Carducci Giulia Matturo as Maria Amitrano Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as Anna Amitrano Dino Abbrescia as Pino Amitrano Giorgio Careccia as Felice Natale Diego Abatantuono as Sergio Materia Fabio Tetta as Teschio Natale Stefano Biase as Salvatore Scardaccione Fabio Antonacci as Remo Marzano Adriana Conserva as Barbara Mura Susy Sánchez as Filippo's mother Antonella Stefanucci as Assunta Meehan Riccardo Zinna as Pietro Mura Michele Vasca as Candela Production I'm Not Scared is based on Niccolò Ammaniti's novel Io non ho paura. Ammaniti got the idea for the book during a road trip to Apulia in the late 1990s. The novel won the 2001 Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction. Since its publication in 2001, the novel sold nearly 700,000 copies and was published in over twenty languages. Jonathan Hunt wrote the English translation, which is available as hardcover and paperback by Canongate, 2003. The story is set in the fictional town of Acqua Traverse (literally water crossings) in the equally fictitious province of Lucignano (not to be confused with the real town of Lucignano, Tuscany). The film was shot in Basilicata and Apulia, regions of southern Italy where director Gabriele Salvatores spent his youth. The primary set was in the countryside near Melfi. Salvatores chose to challenge the kind of Italian film that typically becomes popular on the foreign market: "the beautiful ocean, the nostalgic past, mafia, pizza, and mandolins." The story is loosely based on a true story of a kidnapped boy from Milan during the anni di piombo in the 1970s, a time of turmoil and terrorism in Italy. At the time, it was alarmingly common to kidnap people from the North and transport them to the South, where they would be hidden and sometimes killed unless the ransom was paid. 1978 was the year in which kidnappings