Filibus is a 1915 Italian silent adventure film directed by Mario Roncoroni and written by the future science fiction author Giovanni Bertinetti (it).

It features Valeria Creti (fr) as the title character, a mysterious sky pirate who makes daring heists with her technologically advanced airship.

Her crew of masked assistants lower a capsule, allowing Filibus to reach the airship, change into her burglary outfit, and fly to Kutt-Hendy's residence.

When Sandy turns out the lights to show off the sparkling diamonds, the Count cuts a hole in the glass and deposits a note announcing that Filibus will steal the statue that night.

Kutt-Hendy, resolved to trap Filibus, helps Sandy plant a tiny camera in one eye of the statue and replace the real diamonds with fake ones.

[2] Roncoroni went on to direct La Nave (1921) in collaboration with Gabriele d'Annunzio, before moving to Spain, where his film career continued through the rest of the 1920s.

[5] In the title role was a little-known actress, Valeria Creti; Cristina Ruspoli (often erroneously credited as Filibus in secondary sources) played Leonora.

[6] Other players included Giovanni Spano as Kutt-Hendy, Mario Mariani as the police inspector who briefly appears about halfway through the film, and possibly Filippo Vallino as Leo Sandy (the actor has not yet been identified with certainty).

"[3] In writing Filibus, Bertinetti may have been especially influenced by a contemporary push to bring feminist ideals to Futurism, spearheaded by the French writer Valentine de Saint-Point's call for women to shake off oppression and torpor and to embrace the activity and independence associated with men.

(While the character of Filibus was likely inspired by the huge popularity of Fantômas, she strongly resembles Lupin in her enthusiasm for burgling and baffling for the thrill of it rather than for direct reward.

[7] These themes mirror a wave of gender identity exploration then occurring in Italian culture: for example, Francesca Bertini had recently played a male protagonist in Pierrot the Prodigal, women's fashions at Futurist parties had begun to imitate styles for men, and a trickle of short action films with autonomous heroines had begun to appear.

The American writer Monica Nolan notes that, with its multiple disguises, stealthy adventures, and psychological subterfuges, the film blurs the line between illusion and reality—so thoroughly, indeed, that "it's anybody's guess whether [Filibus's] flirtation [with Leonora] is opportunistic, genuine, or a combination of the two.

[6] The Cineteca di Bologna screened Filibus in 1997 as part of the Cinema Ritrovato festival, with its program calling the film "an odd and funny forerunner of science-fiction movies.

In her program notes, Monica Nolan calls the film's protagonist "one of a kind," adding: "The special effects are endearingly low-budget, but who cares, when the action is fast-paced and just plain fun?

[11] The performing arts writer Imogen Sara Smith, in an essay for Film Comment on the 2017 San Francisco festival, noted that the film "zips along with crisp, deliciously absurd plotting and an effervescent lightness of touch," highlighting Creti's "gracefully androgynous and slyly gleeful" performance as well as the plot's feminist themes.