Packed house at Montclair State University, with over 200 people, for the NJ Premiere of Sicilian Ghost Story, a mesmerizing film directed by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia, which The New York Times called “divine” as it selected it as a Critic’s Pick last week.

A simultaneously lyrical and nightmarish rendition of the brutal kidnapping and later killing of a 13-year-old boy in the mid-1990s right after the peak of the mafia wars, the film is ultimately a tribute to the resilience of those young people who are driven by a moral compass made out of feelings and imagination, which challenges the violence and cowardice of the adults surrounding them.