TITLE: The Princess of Calabria
GENRE: Crime Drama / Political Thriller
LOGLINE:
In the shadow of Italy’s most feared crime syndicate, a reformed Calabrian fixer teaches the dyslexic daughter of a mafia boss to read — only for her to become a legal secretary whose quiet brilliance helps bring down Italy’s most untouchable political and criminal figures, culminating in the arrest of Silvio Berlusconi.
ACT ONE — Blood and Letters
Opening Scene:
Coastal Calabria, early 2000s. Giuseppe “Juco” Rossi (nicknamed Juco for short), a wiry, weathered man in his 40s, watches from a cliff as smugglers unload crates in the moonlight. He knows the operation inside out — he used to run it. But prison changed him. Now he works at a tiny public library, keeping his head down.
One day, a black Maserati pulls up. Out steps Rosanna Tyler, 19, half-Calabrian, half-English, the daughter of Antonio Tyler — a feared ’Ndrangheta capo. Rosanna has been pulled from school countless times due to “learning problems” and family scandals. Her father orders Juco to teach her to read, thinking literacy might help her with “legitimate” bookkeeping for the family.
Juco quickly realizes she has severe dyslexia. Instead of shaming her like others did, he uses colored overlays, gentle patience, and streetwise metaphors from mafia life to make the words click. Their lessons form a delicate friendship, one that balances on the edge of danger.
ACT TWO — Reading Between the Lies
Rosanna blossoms under Juco’s mentorship. She starts reading novels, legal codes, and eventually, court transcripts. Her father sees her as a sharper tool for the family; Juco sees her as a way to atone for his past.
During one lesson, Juco slips her a book banned by her father: an investigative journalist’s exposé on the ’Ndrangheta, detailing secret deals between mafia bosses, business tycoons, and Rome’s political elite. Rosanna is horrified to see her family’s name in its pages.
When her father is arrested in a minor sweep, Rosanna takes a job as a low-level clerk in a Naples law office. She discovers she can spot patterns others miss — hidden clauses, falsified contracts, laundering schemes — simply because she’s learned to look at documents differently from years of struggling with words.
Quietly, she begins passing information to a small anti-mafia task force led by prosecutor Maria Lupo, who’s been chasing a larger target: the Propaganda Due network, Italy’s most secret and dishonorable lodge of power brokers, which includes political kingmakers and even the sitting Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
ACT THREE — The Fall of the House
The danger escalates. Juco is nearly killed in a staged “road accident” meant as a warning. Rosanna’s own cousin betrays her identity to the family. But the prosecutor protects her under a witness-assistance program, moving her to Rome under a new name.
There, Rosanna decodes a labyrinth of offshore accounts linking ’Ndrangheta drug profits to construction kickbacks, TV media empires, and political bribery. Every breadcrumb points to the same man at the top.
Final Sequence:
In a tense press conference, Maria Lupo announces arrest warrants. Police swarm a lavish villa in Sardinia. Cameras capture a defiant yet shaken Silvio Berlusconi being led away in handcuffs, denying everything.
Back in Calabria, Juco watches the footage on a dusty old TV in his library. Rosanna, now free from witness protection, visits him. She hands him a book — The Count of Monte Cristo — with a colored overlay still tucked inside.
Rosanna: “You taught me to read, Juco. Now I’m teaching Italy to see.”
They sit in silence as the waves crash below, knowing the war against corruption is far from over — but today, a giant has fallen.
TONE & STYLE:
Think Gomorrah meets Spotlight — gritty realism mixed with political intrigue. Scenes alternate between rural Calabria’s olive groves and Rome’s marble corridors of power. The colored overlays become a visual motif — flashes of green, blue, yellow washing over documents and faces during key revelations.
THEMES:
- Literacy as liberation and rebellion
- The invisible power of women in dismantling organized crime
- The tension between blood loyalty and moral courage
- The slow grind of justice against entrenched corruption
ENDING FEEL:
Bittersweet victory — justice is real, but it costs blood, exile, and the destruction of family ties.