“Shooting the Mafia” is the clever title of a documentary that premiered at DOC NYC, the largest documentary festival in America. The title refers to photographer Letizia Battaglia, the first female photojournalist to get a regular job on a major newspaper in Italy. She worked primarily in Palermo, the home of the Mafia, which meant she spent a lot of her time taking pics of recently deceased corpses.
Director Kim Longinotto spends most of the early part of the doc on Battaglia’s personal life and it’s lively enough, but pretty unremarkable. She had affairs and kids and spent some time in a sanitarium. When I re-read that last sentence, it sounds better than it was in the film.
While Battaglia’s personal life continues to appear throughout, it’s when we are shown and told about the Mafia’s grip on Palermo that it’s worthwhile viewing. This is when we meet a better subject for a documentary contained within this one. 
Judge Giovanni Falcone prosecuted the leaders of the Mafia, put hundreds of them in prison, and became an enormous personality in Italy. This made him quite unpopular among the criminal element and they murdered him, along with other government officials. It made me very curious for a more in-depth exploration of that story.
Letizia Battaglia has lived a pretty wild life, but despite things that should sizzle in the story, somehow it’s awfully calm and dry. It’s still enjoyable enough, but this is a prime example of a documentary having great subject matter, but only average storytelling. It also does a pretty poor job of explaining the details of how the assassinations were carried out and executed. I guess it’s still worth a shot.
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