Porthobellothe six episodes series which Marco Bellocchio started thinking years ago reading The book of Francesca Scopelliti, Letters to Francescawhich collected a part of the letters that Enzo Tortora sent to the then partner from prison, It will be seen in 2026probably in March. On one platform, hbo maxwhich in Italy has yet to open its doors. HBO produced Portobelloand it is not surprising that Rai (who will also send it to the air in the second instance, ensures the producer Lorenzo Mieli) has not been at the forefront of this project.
Rai, with all the Italian media, is among the protagonists of the tragic path of Enzo Tortoraunjustly accused of being affiliated to the Camorra, imprisoned and condemned. Only at the end of a long Via Crucis has its innocence was ascertained. In the meantime, public TV has abandoned him to his destiny, the media have fierce themselves, The magistrates “did not want to see, blinded by a missionary idea of justiceand, even more inexplicably, I did not want to recognize one’s mistake … the divine justice that cannot be wrong ».
Marco Bellocchio, who certainly on Portobello will have glanced a look at between 1977 to 1983 when he reached the record of 28 million spectators (“Perhaps only by football matches”) recalls that “We, leftist intellectuals, of that popularity we were enviouswe looked at that television theater with detachment ».
Fabrizio Gifuni: “A deep wound in Italian society”
Fabrizio Gifuni, who together with the director and the rest of the cast, Lino Musella (very good), Barbora Bobulova and Romano Magnora Vergano, Today he met the journalists who, at the exhibition, were able to see the first two episodes of the series, recalls that at the time of the Tortora case he was making his maturity, “with the prospect of studying law, which I then did for a few years. There is no doubt that that story has left a deep wound in Italian sociètà which, in the six years in which the transmission passes from black and white to color and records unpublished listening peaks, by climbing over the bodies unchanged by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Aldo Morochanged face ».
Marco Bellocchio. Ph Anna Camerlingo
Public TV did not go out well, which abandoned the popular conductor to its destiny, the newspapers do not come out well, but Not even public opinion hungry for victims to be sacrificedexcited at the thought of throwing the man who had been successful until the day before. For Stefano Bises who wrote it with Bellocchio, wrote it, “It is clear that it was a sensational judicial error, and that today the guarantees to protect the suspects are very different, but a story remains that still has to question everyone”.
Gabrizio Gifuni is Enzo Tortora in Portobello. Ph Anna Camerlingo
Bellocchio certainly wonders since, with this series, he adds Another piece to the reconstruction project of the history of our country and the story of its traumas. «I think we change. And that we learn »he explains. Director of Piacenza had made more personal films in the past, but it is not said that Good morning night, external night, kidnapped, the traitorthey are less. «Talking about Italian things can also mean entering your own images in the events of Aldo Moro or Edgardo Mortara (the child protagonist of Kidnapped, editor’s note). And then they are happy to have returned to a very personal story, such as that of Marx cheaper to wait (the documentary on the suicide of the twin Camillo in 1968, editor’s note), What’s more autobiographical than that? Being artists is a condition to defend. Each story contains dark elements in itself and it is necessary to take risks to tell it.
The story of Enzo Tortora dark elements contained many, certainly not only was unfortunate, his is the story of “a man perhaps unpleasant to many, but – and this is the aggravating circumstance – who did not belong to any church, neither to the Christian Democrats nor to the communists. He was liberal, a party that had little counted ». And in Italy, Piera degli Esposti said it clearly in theTime of religion“Without a protector, a father, a godfather, a patron, you are nothing”.