IL DONO: Michelangelo Frammartino’s Memento Mori

Michelangelo Frammartino’s 2003 debut feature, Il Dono (The Gift), is a film about a dying place—specifically the tiny Calabrian village of Caulonia, the filmmaker’s ancestral home—so it’s only fitting that it is bookended by scenes of loss. The film opens with an elderly man (Angelo Frammartino) summoning local boys to