THEThe case of Elisa Claps has kept public opinion in suspense and the Claps family from 1993 to 2010. Today the story of the sixteen-year-old who disappeared in Potenza and was found seventeen years later in the attic of the church of the Lucanian city, is told in the TV series Elisa – The Claps caseon Rai 1 from tonight at 9.30pm.
Marco Pontecorvo’s fiction in three episodes it doesn’t just tell the news story, but the struggle of the family and above all of Elisa’s brother, Gildo, to get to the truth. Brick by brick until the serial killer Danilo Restivo was framed, the boy slightly older than Elisa, who saw the girl last. A heartbreaking and moving story about the thousand facets of evil and the love of a family that fought in the name of the truth.
Elisa – The Claps case: the plot
Power, 1993. Elisa is a girl like many othershe is sixteen years old and has his first heartbeats. Danilo Restivo (Giulio Della Monica), a boy a little older than her is onto her, her friends and classmates don’t look favorably on him: «He’s a strange man who lives in a world of his own». However, she accepts the invitation to meet at the Church of the SS Trinità. Elisa will never leave that place again.
What happened? The Claps family is desperate. Gildo (Gianmarco Saurino), together with his brother Luciano (James George) and his girlfriend Irene (Rosa Diletta Rossi), begins looking for her everywhere and plasters the city with posters with her sister’s face.
Gildo is convinced that Danilo knows something about Elisa. The boy returned home with bloody clothes and a cut hand: he told his family and the police that he fell from an escalator. The father (Francesco Acquaroli) senses that something serious has happened: his strategy is to protect his son by sending him first to Naples and then entrusting it into the hands of a lawyer.
Ludovica Caschetti plays Elisa Claps. (Rai)
Gildo fight for the truth at any cost. Goes to Who has seen? and renounces Rome, where he would have trained as a lawyer. He will never stop until he finds out what happened to his sister.
The fight for the truth by Gildo Claps
The series had the family’s pass and the real Gildo Claps signed on as a consultant. «I had many doubts about the television adaptation – says the brother of Elisa – it was difficult to deal with a painful and tormented past, but all my fears vanished when I saw the final result. I’m not someone who watches a lot of series, but I think that among those based on true stories this is the best”.
The writers tried to give back the essence of the story. «We tried to paint the truth and bend it to the needs of fiction – say the screenwriters – it is not a documentary so in certain cases we thought we would support the emotion of truth through small inventions.”
Gianmarco Saurino and Giacomo Giorgio. (Rai)
Gianmarco Saurino: «My most difficult role»
«It is the most tiring role I have faced – he declared Gianmarco Saurino – this story talks about the thousand faces of evil and the hope of a family.” Saurino met and spoke with Gildo.
Giulio Della Monica as Restivo. (Rai press office)
Also Anna Ferruzzo, in the role of Filomena, Elisa’s mother, she compared herself with the real Filomena. «I knew her through her interventions Who saw it? then I met her and one sentence was enough for me to understand her pain: “Put your heart into this story because we have lost our heart”. We had to go beyond the limits of acting when we accepted this challenge.”
The church of SS. Trinità is open, an insult to the Claps family
After the dramatic event last August the church of the SS Trinità of Potenza, without the possibility of celebrating functions. For Gildo Claps «It’s yet another insult to my family, there are responsibilities that weigh on the Potentino clergy: the omissions, the silences, the delays are also their responsibility.
Self Danilo Restivo he acted undisturbed it is not just because he was covered by the family. The church has never apologized to us – underlines Gildo – reopening that church is an embarrassing act.”
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED