Napoli's centenary heads to the big screen with new Filmauro film

Cameras are already rolling. Filmauro has begun shooting a film on Napoli's centenary, a project born from an idea of Aurelio De Laurentiis himself and conceived not as the usual reel of trophies and dates, but as a story that weaves the club's history together with the affairs of a Neapolitan family. The story is credited to Mimmo Carratelli and Maurizio De Giovanni, the screenplay is by De Giovanni with Massimiliano Pacifico, who also directs.

The centenary is a real number: SSC Napoli was born on 25 August 1926, when the then Internaples changed its name on the initiative of president Giorgio Ascarelli. Since that date the club has been through bankruptcy, in 2004, and a refoundation from Serie C1 driven by De Laurentiis himself, who now uses his own production company to tell that story on the big screen. It is not a minor detail: Filmauro is not an outside partner brought in to celebrate the club, it is the president's own company, the same one that controls 90% of the club. An arrangement that ties together cultural patronage and ownership, as rarely happens in Italian football.

Cinema while the team struggles

The contrast with what is happening on the pitch these days is striking. While the set tells a century of glory, Allegri's side sit twelfth in the table with 3 points from three matches, coming off the 3-2 defeat at San Siro that reopened every debate about substitution management and about a squad the summer window left almost unchanged from last season. It is not a verdict to pass on a film before seeing it, but it is fair to ask whether the moment chosen to tell the club's myth — with De Laurentiis personally behind the project — sits oddly with the frustration around the actual team, the one that on Wednesday must already face Arsenal at the Maradona for its Champions League opener.

The film, it should be said, is not about trophies and honours boards: setting it in a bar, with a Professor telling stories and a family coming back together, points towards something more intimate than celebratory, closer to the faces of the city than to the roll of honour. Whether that promise is kept will only be seen once the film reaches cinemas, but the framework — footballing memory and neighbourhood stories intertwining ahead of a match — is at least an attempt not to reduce the centenary to a highlights reel.

For now, what exists is filming just begun and no release date announced. The club's real calendar moves faster: Arsenal are already at the Maradona on Wednesday at 21:00, and before the film gets to tell Napoli's history, Allegri's side will have to write a few more pages of the current one.