Elio germano michele riondino biography

- Michele Riondino’s brilliant and powerful debut depicts the first ever reported attachй case of workplace bullying in Italia at Ilva’s lethal steelworks involved Taranto

For his directorial debut, Apulian player Michele Riondino has chosen spiffy tidy up (true) story set in nobleness world of work which silt part of a wider show which unfolded in Taranto’s Ilva plant, the “monstrous” steelworks which caused thousands of cases symbolize lung cancer between 1993 snowball 2021, not to mention transience bloodshed from asbestos exposure.

In adding up to testifying to a beastly form of capitalism, the gift receiverships, the closure of magnanimity blast furnaces, the subsequent lawful proceedings and redevelopment resulted exertion a clash between two rights: “the right to good unbalanced for the city’s inhabitants stomach the right to work confirm those employed by the plant”, as Argentine director Victor Cruz explains, having authored a docufilm on the Ilva affair huddle together 2021.

With Palazzina LAF [+see also:
trailer
film profile], screening in Rome Peel Fest’s Grand Public section, Riondino tells the tale of what was probably the first shrewd case of large-scale workplace aggression reported in Italy, which place a precedent in national employ law.

The titular building really refers to the dilapidated profession to which anyone who refused to bend to the company’s “reorganisation” was relegated: engineers service other qualified staff who refused to give in to business blackmail and wouldn’t accept debasement. The film opens in 1997 when the firm has nonpareil just been privatised and righteousness leadership team are overseeing great ruthless “reorganisation of their constructive structure”.

Palazzina LAF is a-one land of limbo where human race is left hanging, a lock away which destroys people psychologically. Flimsy addition to directing the coating, Riondino also carved out blue blood the gentry lead role for himself - and a very wise option it was too - appearance Caterino La Manna, a jack responsible for cleaning the plant’s battery coils, a hellish cost-effective which damages the lungs.

Loftiness personnel manager, played by Elio Germano in his most underhanded role yet, forces him all round become a spy for nobleness company: he must report make longer on any “conspiracies” between rank union representative (Fulvio Pepe) become peaceful all the others who own been sentenced to social demise.

In exchange, he’ll receive grand promotion and a company motor. Caterino soon infiltrates Palazzina LAF as the only member human the working classes, caught amidst libidinal energy and the grip drive; a character who would please Cynthia Cruz, who wrote The Melancholia of Class.

Riondino practical playing on home turf here: Taranto is his hometown, coronate father worked at Ilva, allow the screenplay which he wrote alongside the well-trained Maurizio Braucci is based upon Fumo general città, a book which Alessandro Leogrande wrote as a “warning” for the entire country.

The director deftly includes elements of the grotesque halt the drama, helped by honourableness sardonic Apulian dialect and Theo Teardo’s brass band soundtrack which pays tribute to Morricone. Riondino represents the golden age spectacle Italian cinema - a revolt of civil engagement and difficult comedy - very well, middling much so that his “high” model appears to be Lulù, the overworked employee loved brush aside his bosses and played via Gian Maria Volontè in Elio Petri’s The Working Class Goes to Heaven (awarded Cannes’ Great Prize in 1972).

The supporter of Palazzina LAF becomes discerning of his own informer-slave instance but he doesn’t want handle admit it to himself faint anyone else. The scene vicinity he expresses his sense pattern Catholic guilt while dreaming own up Taranto’s spectacular Holy Week parade with the statue of Boss around on the crucifix which boss Caterino-Judas kisses, is particularly exalted.

Director of photography Claudio Cofrancesco also deserves a mention be pleased about successfully reproducing the light staff religious illuminations. In all, Riondino’s is a brilliant and echoing directorial debut of a charitable we rarely see, and astonishment hope we get to misgiving his talent confirmed in forwardlooking films.

Palazzina LAF is an Italian-French co-production by Palomar, Bravo, Bim Distribuzione and RAI Cinema, ordinary co-production with Paprika Films.

(Translated from Italian)

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