After opening with a scene populated by orange-skinned mafiosi fighting over tanning booths in between manicures, director Matteo Garrone can forgive the audience for briefly believing his latest project involves run-of-the-mill, vanity-obsessed criminals. In actuality, the filmmaker has woven together five compellingly dispassionate storylines about the men, women and children who work for the mob, trapped in an arranged marriage from which the only escape, it would seem, is death. Garrone’s Italy is a stripped, washed-out place—not at all the sensual, sun-dappled utopia depicted in American cinema. His Naples is a depressing hive of bleak housing projects where the young splash around in kiddie pools on rooftops guarded by gun-toting toughs. Based on Roberto Saviano’s best-selling exposé of the unbelievably powerful Camorra organization—said to bring in billions a year and believed to have killed 3,600 people in the past three decades—the characters exist in a world where boys agree to be shot at to prove their courage, friends become enemies and no one really knows why or which side they’re fighting on. After offing some insubordinate teens, one of the clan’s foot soldiers states, “It had to be done.” His colleague’s weary response says it all: “It’s just so much trouble.”—Stéphanie Verge

Public screening: Thursday, Sept. 11, 9 a.m., Scotiabank Theatre.