Procacci wants to squelch “preventive controversy" on Diaz

by Vittoria Scarpa

17/05/2011 - Shooting hasn’t even started and already the bullets of controversy are flying over Diaz - Non pulite questo sangue, the film on the bloody raid of the Diaz School during the G8 demonstrations in Genoa in 2001, announced last Sunday at Cannes by the film’s producer, Domenico Procacci (Fandango).

Yesterday, the parents of Carlo Giuliani, the young man killed by a Carabiniere during the demonstrations, released a statement expressing their concerns upon discovering that Procacci gave Italy’s Chief of Police Antonio Manganelli a copy of the screenplay to read. The producer defended himself, saying, "There’s no need for preventive controversy. I met with him only to inform him".

"It was my first contact with the police", added the Fandango founder, who closed international co-production agreements for the film at Cannes, "while I had many direct meetings with the people inside the Diaz School on the night of July 21".

Directed by Daniele Vicari (The Past is a Foreign Land [trailer]) Diaz, the €7m film is being made with France’s Le Pacte and Romania’s Mandragora.

The account of the raid of 300 police officers on the Diaz School, which was being used as sleeping quarters for 93 demonstrators, will star Elio Germano as Resto del Carlino journalist Lorenzo Guadagnucci (who was beaten that night) and Claudio Santamaria as the Rome flying squad chief Michelangelo Fournier (who only later denounced the violence).

The cast is rounded out by Rolando Ravello, Alessandro Roja, Pippo Del Bono, Paolo Calabresi, Pietro Ragusa, German actress Jennifer Ulrich and Romania’s Monica Barladeanu.

“The film will be entirely based on the trial, save only those invented elements needed to transform the eyewitness accounts into narrative material for the cinema'', added Procacci.

Diaz starts principal photography in Genoa in June.

(Translated from Italian)