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It was May 1992 when Giovanni Falcone blown up on the highway from Punta Raisi Airport to Palermo, near Capaci. Few months later another magistrate who had fought Mafia together with Falcone, Paolo Borsellino, was killed on his way to visit his mother. After almost 18 years, just a few young people know who these judges were. To them it's addressed a cartoon shown on preview in Rapallo

John and Paul and the Mystery of Puppets is a 26-minute TV special cartoon that should be broadcast on Raitre tv before summer. It was presented at MIPTV in Cannes, the leading international trade show of audio video products and the first 5 minutes of the special (co-produced by Rai Fiction and Larcadarte in collaboration with the Sicilian Region), with the voices of Leo Gullotta, Donatella Finocchiaro and Claudio Gioè were premiered in Rapallo during the awards ceremony of Cartoons on the Bay. The story is set in the ‘50s in Palermo and talks about two boys, John and Paul, who struggle to free the neighborhood from the presence of a evil wizard who takes away the soul of people and turns them into 'puppets'.
The evil wizard is the Mafia and the two guys will do everything to save the neighborhood from this curse.
The idea of this cartoon came after reading a survey that revealed how the school children did not know Falcone and Borsellino. So Alessandra Viola, a Sicilian, decided to write the script with Rosalba Vitellaro (also director) and Valentina Mazzola under the artistic direction entrusted to Enrico Paolantonio. ''We have found a metaphor to explain how fighting the Mafia is always victorious. Going to the wizard instead, a metaphor of the Cosa Nostra, people become progressively of wood and lose their freedom."
The message is "the will of each of us can beat an endemic disease like Mafia," says Carlo Nardello, CEO of RAI Trade. It’s an important message for young people, because today nobody speaks about mafia but this does not mean that Mafia does not exist. Memory is becoming shorter and shorter and people tend to forget who, almost twenty years ago, sacrificed his life in an unequal struggle against crime.
In Sicily, this year, there will be a cartoon contest for schools, too, and it will be made a legality kit that will be distributed in 1,500 schools, to play on topical issues and civic education.
Because the best way to remember Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino is to educate the younger generation and make them aware of what the Mafia is and what damage can cause to our society. It’s sad that we need some cartoons to keep alive the memory of these men, when it should be the responsibility of society, schools and educators.

Marianna Lepore