Streets of ‘Gomorrah’

Lorenzo Lipurali's apartment smells of ammonia and cheap pine air freshener. It is on the fourth floor of the condemned Le Vele housing project in Scampia, just north of Naples. A big man with fat hands and a gentle smile, Lipurali is sitting at a small table in the middle of his narrow living room. His light blue NAPOLI FOOTBALL sweatshirt is unzipped, splitting the NAP FROM the OLI. His 14-year-old daughter Anna serves espresso and mineral water in tiny white plastic cups. Lipurali, who says he is unemployed, slips a bootleg copy of "Gomorrah," a prize-winning new film about Neapolitan crime families, into his high-tech stereo system and fast-forwards to his favorite part. The widescreen TV shows the same view as the one from Lipurali's window; gunshots echo on the soundtrack. "There I am," he says with a grin, pausing the grainy bootleg. In the background of the frame, he is guiding a giant sofa suspended by ropes from one of Le Vele's upper apartments. As Lipurali lowers the sofa, two preteen boys from rival families philosophize about how they are now enemies who might have to kill each other the next time they meet. How many takes to get the shot right? "Six or seven," says Lipurali with a laugh. "The sofa kept swinging."

Like many who live in this condemned apartment block, Lipurali misses the irony of his 15 minutes of fame. Roberto Saviano's gritty book "Gomorrah," on which the film is based, was the first of its kind to expose the brutal Neapolitan Camorra to a global audience. But it is Matteo Garrone's movie that puts real faces on Saviano's characters. Garrone used locals like the two young boys, Lipurali and his daughter to add authenticity to the docudrama. What he ended up with was a tragic home movie about real life in Scampia and other crime-rich Neapolitan suburbs.

The movie follows the five stories that illustrate the Camorra's global reach: drugs, extortion, toxic-waste mismanagement, counterfeiting and murder. Saviano's book has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide, and the movie will likely receive an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. Earlier this month it won five European Film awards, including best movie, best director and best cinematography. But Saviano, an investigative journalist, lives in depressing solitude, accompanied by five state-issued bodyguards who move him around Italy to protect him from the Camorra, which has vowed to kill him by Christmas. Though satisfied with the impact his book and the movie have had, Saviano, 29, resents that he has had to give up his freedom. "I am no longer a threat to the clan," he said during a closely guarded interview in Rome. "It's the readers and those who see the movie that cause the real threat to them now."

The housing projects Saviano depicts in the book remain unchanged since he grew up in one in Casal di Principe. His reportage has had no impact on the clan's activities; bootleg copies of the movie sell for €3 on the streets of Naples. The drug trade and killings are as rampant as ever; anti-mafia police estimate that the various clans composing the Camorra kill at least one person every three days. Last spring the Italian government sent 500 troops to set up armed checkpoints around Caserta, Scampia and Casal di Principe. The Camorra clans responded by establishing their own checkpoints that even the soldiers wouldn't cross. "This is normal for these people," says Saviano. "No one is innocent there—even if they aren't criminals. Their daily life might involve watching someone murdered, witnessing a robbery, stumbling onto a drug transaction—things people in other parts of the world never see in their whole lives."

As "Gomorrah" makes clear, the Camorra's reach is vast and varied. It buys toxic waste from Northern European companies and makes financial investments in North America. But the local cocaine and heroin business is the most lucrative, bringing in an estimated €500,000 a day. In Le Vele, there are no legitimate stores, yet plenty of bustling drug workshops. Fewer than half the apartments have glass in the windows. The pavement is torn up and the walls gutted. The long corridors are all dead ends, and the views are dismal. After a major earthquake in 1980, many of the poorest displaced Neapolitans stormed the complex and claimed the abandoned apartments. In 1989 and again in 1993, the entire complex was condemned. Only 100 families live here legally; another 400 live as squatters. They coexist with the drug trade and even receive a house discount: half-price doses for residents. But few of them are users. They see where it leads.

International clients buy massive quantities of heroin and cocaine through seedy warehouses and underground storage facilities nearby. On the ground floor of each building in Le Vele, women run make- shift drug shops. They sit behind folding tables with cardboard boxes full of plastic syringes, which they sell for €1. They also sell candy bars and soft drinks to the kids who live here. Once customers purchase syringes, they are directed to the basement where they can buy a dose of heroin for €16 cash. They simply toss the used syringes in the grass on their way out.