Abhiroop Das
Co-directed by Ernesto Contreras, Alba Gil, and Alejandro Zuno, Netflix’s ‘I’m Not Afraid’ begins in the year of 1986, with Mexico hosting its second World Cup and paving the way to many historic moments in the world of sports, and even outside of it. However, in a small, plantation-oriented village deep in the woods, life seems to have come to a standstill, save for the occasional chirps and squeals of a group of kids. When 10-year-old Miguel finds a mysterious boy named Felipe, who is caged underground in a forbidden mansion, a quest for truth begins to take shape. Hesitant to tell his parents about any of this, Miguel tries to help Felipe all by himself, not knowing what horrors await. Also known as ‘No Tengo Miedo,’ this Spanish mystery series is equal parts a coming-of-age narrative and a deep inquiry into the social distinctions of crime and punishment.
I’m Not Afraid is a Mexican Take on a Classic Italian Novel
‘I’m Not Afraid’ is a work of fiction based on the eponymous novel by Italian author Niccolò Ammaniti, which has been reimagined for the screen by writers Maria Camila Arias and Mónica Herrera. The original idea for the novel came to Ammaniti while he was on a road trip to Puglia in Southern Italy, especially when he came across the region’s rolling hinterlands. As he crossed acres and acres of farmland filled with nothing but wheat, save for a few houses, Ammaniti began to conceptualize how life would play out in such an isolated environment. He thought about families who might have called this place their home decades ago, and from there, his mind wandered to what children would do in such a place during a long summer break from school. It is this concept that became the starting point for Ammaniti’s work, with the theme of loss of one’s innocence at the center of the narrative.
When designing ‘I’m Not Afraid,’ one of the unique things Ammaniti attempted was to translate the imagination of a child onto the page, for which he reportedly consulted his father, psychiatrist Massimo Ammaniti. While the realism effect achieved in the novel via narration techniques and eccentric symbolism, the series goes for a completely different approach, focusing on the traumatic impact on the children’s psyches. However, the clash between imagination and reality remains central to the story, which also explains Ammaniti’s long-standing obsession with horror and the occult. The author started out by fiddling with the concept of a child’s understanding of monsters, which can be wide enough to include real-life figures, before developing a complete creative vision, away from any direct influences from real life or history.
I’m Not Afraid Shines a Light on the Horrors of Kidnapping and its Consequences
While ‘I’m Not Afraid’ is in some ways an emotionally challenging bildungsroman, its narrative base serves as a reimagination of the real anxieties of the era it describes. Though the Netflix series spans the early to mid-1980s, unlike the book, which is set in 1978, both iterations capture the same rise in kidnapping cases in Italy. A 1998 report by the Italian Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission noted that, between 1969 and 1998, almost 700 people were kidnapped in Italy, with children often being the target. In 1991, as a response to this crisis, the Italian government banned families from making ransom payments, so as to dissuade others from kidnapping. Reports also state that the assets of such families were often frozen to ensure compliance with the law, indicating how extreme the situation had gotten.
In the series, the kidnapping of Felipe emerges as a lynchpin, leading our main characters to shed their innocence and question who can really be trusted in life. Parallel to this theme, the show also introduces a new historical tie-in, that being the 1986 FIFA World Cup. This switch is largely in part due to the shift in setting from Italy to Mexico, which allows the writing team to add more layers as they go. Throughout the episodes, we learn more about the legendary tournament and what role teams like Mexico and Argentina played in it, and it appears that the show has retained historical accuracy on that front. When it comes to the larger mystery plotline, however, Niccolò Ammaniti or the writers of this adaptation have seemingly not relied on any particular story and instead likely drew on various chunks of history.
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