Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Two children scavenging through the ruins of a bombed-out Naples decide their only real chance at a future lies across an ocean, in Gabriele Salvatores's 2024 postwar drama.
What is Naples to New York about?
Carmine and Celestina are barely old enough to fend for themselves, yet the devastation of postwar Naples leaves them no other option, and they learn to survive together on scraps of kindness and quick thinking. When word reaches them of a ship bound for New York, the two stow away in search of Celestina's sister, who emigrated to America years earlier and now represents their only real hope of a stable life. Pierfrancesco Favino leads a cast that widens once the children join a crowd of Italian emigrants also chasing new beginnings across the Atlantic. Arrival in an unfamiliar, towering city brings fresh dangers and unlikely allies, and the film follows Carmine and Celestina as they slowly, painfully learn to call this strange metropolis home.
Cast & crew
Pierfrancesco Favino brings gravity to a story largely carried by its young leads, Dea Lanzaro and Antonio Guerra, whose performances as Celestina and Carmine ground the film's more sweeping historical backdrop in something intimate and specific. Anna Ammirati and Anna Lucia Pierro add texture to the Naples sections, while Omar Benson Miller and Tomas Arana enter once the story shifts to New York, marking the transition between the two halves of the children's journey. Antonio Catania rounds out a supporting ensemble that never overshadows the two young leads at its center.
Context & significance
Director Gabriele Salvatores, an Oscar winner known for blending intimate character stories with larger historical canvases, sets Naples to New York against the real postwar wave of Italian emigration to the United States, a period that reshaped families on both sides of the Atlantic. The film's structure, splitting between a devastated Naples and an overwhelming New York, mirrors the disorientation felt by the actual emigrants of that era. Released in 2024, it joins a long line of Italian cinema returning to the emigration story, though it approaches the subject through the eyes of children rather than adults.
Where & how to watch
Naples to New York streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles available, letting viewers pick whichever fits their preference. This page can be read by anyone at no cost; watching the film itself simply requires logging into a free K-Time account, with a Farsi-language interface designed to make the experience comfortable for Persian-speaking viewers wherever they are.