Io non ho paura (I'm Not Scared)

Sometimes, you have a story so good it feels like cheating, like there is no way the movie could fail. We all want to write that story. I want to write that story. I'm Not Scared is kind of that story. Set in a place so surreal it feels realistic, and no doubt is -- not even a village; four or five hovels crowded together, surrounded by endless rolling seas of wheat, a couple of old cathedral ruins and somewhere, a single shop. The perspective of the story, like Let The Right One In, is exclusively Michele's, the 10-year-old, and so as he explores the dark world around him, we only understand things at the rate and in the ways that he does. He grows up because he has to, and he faces his frightening world head-on. He is brave, and willing to do what he knows is right, that makes him a man. In that figurative, coming-of-age sense.

Anyway, the conceit of this story and the way information is delivered is sharp and brilliant, and it's a premise so strong with a tone so right that it couldn't fail. And it doesn't.

And it's absolutely a perfect match for one of the two story ideas I'm courting.