Michele and his friends love to play in the tall grass of their Italian village. Wheat fields with stalks as high as their necks provide intoxicating pleasure for running, rolling or just plain relaxing. During one of their romps, Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) peels back a layer of corrugated tin covering a pit of some kind and spots a human foot poking out from under a blanket.
Michele befriends the chained boy in the pit but doesn't notify anyone of his discovery, as he notices his parents (Dino Abrescia and Anita Sanchez-Gijon) behaving in an increasingly suspicious manner.
Adapted from Francesca Marciano's novel, I'm Not Scared connects everything in a lovely and terrifying way, though the movie includes a coda that feels tacked on and drains some of the icy energy from the rest of the work. Director Gabriele Salvatores always has some visual angle working, such as his wide-open landscapes drenched in blinking sun juxtaposed with the creepy, dank hole whose edges never fully register in the peripheral vision. Here, childhood is irrational fears, unfulfilled wants and unanswered questions, with a tiny glimmer of hope mixed in.