Capitol Films has acquired world sales rights on Academy Award-winning director Gabriele Salvatores' I'm Not Scared (Io No Ha Paura), which will screen in competition at next month's Berlin International Film Festival.

Medusa will release the film in Italy in March, followed by 20th Century Fox in Spain. Jane Barclay, joint head of UK-based Capitol, will attend Berlin.

Based on Niccolo Ammaniti's best selling novel, the film is set in southern Italy in the 1970's, when a boy discovers another child has been kidnapped and is being kept in a hole beneath an abandoned house. Salvatores' Mediterraneo won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1992.