Seeing Precarity Through a Child’s Eyes in Io non ho paura

By Babs van Es

“You are just too young to understand.”

Most people have heard some version of this sentence while growing up, whether from parents, teachers, or other adults around us. Children are often assumed to be incapable of understanding the complexities of the adult, so-called “real” world, that is filled with fear, instability, crime, and uncertainty. Yet the film Io non ho paura (I’m Not Scared, 2003), directed by Gabriele Salvatores and based on Niccolò Ammaniti’s novel, challenges this assumption. Rather than presenting childhood as a stage of innocence and ignorance, the film suggests that children do indeed understand precarity, only in a different way than adults do. It is this tension between the understanding and dealing with precarity that lies at the heart of the film and raises the following question: How does Io non ho paura use the child’s perspective to reimagine the concept of precarity beyond adult understandings?

I argue that the film suggests that children do not experience precarity less intensely than adults, but differently: through imagination, emotional immediacy, and moral intuition rather than structural or economic logic. I believe that we can, in fact, learn a lot from children. They are often more courageous and morally direct than adults, precisely because they are not yet fully shaped by a world defined by fear, compromise, and instability. This is reflected in the film’s reflection on the persistence of childhood imagination into adulthood:

“Da bambino sognavo spesso i mostri… e riuscivo a fregarli, ma anche ora da grande qualche volta mi capita di sognarli… ma non riesco più a fregarli.” (Io non ho paura, 2013). Translated into: “ As a child, I often dreamed about monsters… and I used to be able to outsmart them, but even now that I’m grown up, I sometimes dream about them… but I can’t outsmart them anymore.”

Precarietà in Italian contexts

Set in a small rural town in Southern Italy during the late 1970s, the film Io non ho paura follows the nine-year-old Michele Amitrano, who discovers a kidnapped boy named Filippo hidden in a pit near an abandoned farmhouse. Michele’s response to precarity becomes clear when we look at this specific scene in the film. When he first discovers Filippo hidden in the pit, he initially interprets the unknown through imagination, believing there might be a monster in the pit (00:11:30, Io non ho paura, 2003). This scene shows how childhood perception translates uncertainty into fantasy. However, this imagination does not prevent understanding. When Michele returns to the pit, he gradually understands that Filippo is a real, vulnerable child       (00:19:00-00:20:00). Imagination here functions as a form of understanding rather than a form of ignorance. As Michele gradually learns that members of his community, including his own father are involved in the crime, he is forced to confront a world of secrecy, violence, and betrayal.

To understand the film’s treatment of precarity, it is useful to first define the term in its Italian context. The word precarietà refers to a condition of instability, insecurity, and uncertainty. According to the Treccani dictionary, it describes “the condition or state of being precarious,” often associated with work, finances, health, or general social insecurity (Treccani).

As a result, discussions of precarity often focus on adults struggling with economic insecurity, unemployment, or limited opportunities for social mobility. These forms of instability are also present in Io non ho paura, however, the film also invites us to broaden this definition through Michele’s experiences. Precarity here, is not only about economic survival but also about trust, belonging, and the collapse of familiar certainties.

Economic and Financial Precarity

The adult world in Io non ho paura is shaped by economic precarity. The village is poor, isolated, and offers limited opportunities for social mobility (Katina 2009). Within this context, the kidnapping of Filippo is not presented as simple cruelty, but as a desperate attempt to escape poverty and find a way out of this precarious way of life. This reveals how financial insecurity can distort moral decision-making. Ethical boundaries become secondary to survival, and criminality emerges from structural lack rather than individual evil.

Michele, however, does not understand this logic in economic terms. For him, the situation is defined by secrecy and confusion rather than social structure. What appears as a rational survival strategy for adults appears as a moral rupture from a child’s ‘purer’ perspective.

Moral Precarity

Where the adults in the film experience precarity as economic instability, Michele experiences it primarily as a moral and emotional collapse.

This becomes most evident in a pivotal scene in which Michele discovers that his father is involved in the kidnapping of Filippo (00:25:00-00:28:00). The father figure, previously associated with protection and stability, becomes part of the system of violence he is trying to comprehend. The scene illustrates how precarity is not only economic or social, but also relational: it emerges in the breakdown of trust within the most fundamental relationships (Gabriele).

From this moment on, Michele can no longer rely on the basic assumption that adults act as protectors. The distinction between safety and danger collapses, as expressed in this quote in the film: “Devi avere paura degli uomini, non dei mostri”(Io non ho paura 2003). (“You must be afraid of men, not monsters.”). The world Michele thought he understood is no longer reliable as he recognizes that the real danger comes from human figures.

This creates a form of moral precarity: the collapse of trust in authority and in the people who define one’s sense of safety. Michele is forced into a radical ethical dilemma: loyalty to his family or responsibility toward Filippo, a vulnerable child who depends entirely on him. Unlike adults, Michele does not approach this decision as a calculation of risk and consequence. Instead, it becomes a moral absolute. In choosing to help Filippo escape, he enters a state of existential precarity: he is physically exposed and risks his own live, placing him in a highly precarious position. His decision is not guided by strategic reasoning or fear, but by an immediate moral certainty that overrides self-preservation: an intuitive belief that helping Filippo is the only possible “right” action, even if it threatens his own survival (Katina 2009).

In this sense, Michele’s childhood “purity” is not innocence in the sense of ignorance. It is a refusal to be paralyzed by the complexity that defines adult morality. Where adults become trapped in economic necessity and ethical compromise, Michele acts with a directness that ignores self-preservation.

Childhood, Imagination, and the Transformation of Precarity

Michele’s response to precarity is shaped by imagination rather than abstract reasoning. When he first encounters Filippo, he interprets the unknown through fantasy. But as he begins to understand the reality of the situation, imagination does not disappear, it changes function: it becomes a way of processing instability rather than escaping it. Through imaginative identification, Michele constructs meaning within a world that no longer feels stable. Importantly, this does not suggest ignorance. On the contrary, Michele often demonstrates a clear moral sensitivity that contrasts with the compromised decisions of the adults around him.

Conclusion

The film Io non ho paura complicates the distinction between children and adults by showing that both are shaped by precarity, though in different ways. The adults in the film are not presented as fully rational or stable figures. Rather, they are also trapped within systems of uncertainty, poverty, and moral compromise. Michele’s father, for instance, is not simply a criminal figure, but a man acting within economic desperation and limited possibilities. In this sense, adults appear as “grown-up children” themselves: individuals still trying to understand how to survive and act within an unstable world.

This parallel suggests that precarity is not exclusive to childhood or adulthood, but a shared condition. The difference lies not in whether precarity is experienced, but in how it is interpreted. While adults respond through compromise and calculation, Michele responds through imagination, empathy, and moral immediacy.

By using the child’s perspective, the film reimagines precarity beyond adult understandings. While adults primarily experience precarity as economic and structural instability, Michele experiences it as a collapse of trust, authority, and existential security.

The film therefore expands the meaning of precarity from a socio-economic condition to an emotional, moral, and existential experience. Through Michele’s perspective, instability is not only something to be feared, but something that demands action even at the cost of one’s own safety. In doing so, Io non ho paura challenges the assumption that children do not understand the world. Instead, it suggests that they understand it differently, and sometimes with a clarity that adults have lost.

By Babs van Es

Bibliography:

Ammaniti, Niccolò. Io non ho paura. Einaudi, 2001.

Io non ho paura. Directed by Gabriele Salvatores, performances by Giuseppe Cristiano, Mattia Di Pierro, and Diego Abatantuono, 2003.

“Precarietà – Significato ed etimologia.” Treccani, https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/precarieta/.

Gabriele, Pierluigi. “Io Non Ho Paura: il film con cui Salvatores redime il Meridione.” Auralcrave, https://auralcrave.com/.

Katina. “Italian Retrospective #5: Io Non Ho Paura.” Cut Print Review, 2009.