Alfredo Mantovano: “Ho collaborato alla miniserie di Michele Placido su Livatino”

Rome. Here is the partnership. One, Michele Placido, is a master of cinema and a crime novelist. The other, Alfredo Mantovano, is the Under-Secretary to the Prime Minister and Giorgia’s right-hand man. “It’s true,” Meloni’s right-hand man tells Il Foglio. “I helped write the miniseries about Rosario Livatino.” The first episode was broadcast yesterday at the Rome Film Festival.

“At last,” explains Mantovano, “thirty-six years after his death, Livatino is portrayed for what he was, without exaggeration or exploitation, in a way that conveys his role as a magistrate from the very outskirts, yet one who was central to the system’s balance and effectiveness.”

After Rulli and Petraglia, Placido and Mantovano? “Michele Placido asked me to review the script and, after reading it, I made some comments, which he accepted”. Is that all? “No. At the start of his work, we spoke at length about the figure of Livatino”.

And so here is the film that Roman readers saw yesterday. Two episodes about the blessed magistrate to whom the magistrate from Lecce is devoted.

“Although it is a work of fiction, I can say that it is very faithful to what happened in those years,” says Mantovano, referring to the late 1980s in the Agrigento area. “And by a happy coincidence, the film’s release comes just a few days after the Church proclaimed him the patron saint of magistrates.” Livatino was close to Catholic Action. John Paul II described him as a martyr for justice following his murder, whilst on 7 October last year the Congregation for Divine Worship declared him a patron saint. Are these happy coincidences, in your view? “Yes, but, as Mark Twain said, we call chance the signature of God that we do not wish to recognise.”

The patriarch of Ascoli Satriano thus returns to civil discourse. Yet, the film aside, what is somewhat surprising is that an elderly director does not condemn the government, nor does he mock the (already faltering) hegemony or the ‘party of the nation’.

Yesterday’s event, to which Sergio Mattarella was also invited, was the Festa della Capitale. In other words, the most provincial of film festivals, despite being, in itself, a magnificent film about Rome. Last year, for instance, the political-cinematic duo was Carlo Verdone paired with Mario Draghi: the former Prime Minister and the director, who were together at the premiere of Vita da Carlo (or Vita da Mario, who knows). This year, less Roman and therefore more serious, the pairing is entirely Apulian. This serves as further proof, however, of just how much Italian cinema is always a political offshoot – and vice versa.

The first two episodes – which are due to be broadcast in November on Rai1 and RaiPlay – were screened yesterday at the Auditorium Parco della Musica and the Giulio Cesare cinema. In recent days, Michele Placido had explained how the project came about. His interest was sparked by reading the case files following the beatification ceremony and by a phone call from Bergoglio. Since then, the director has been working on the project continuously and, together with Alfredo Mantovano, has finally rewritten the story of the 37-year-old man murdered by the Stidda.

In the drama, Livatino is played by Giuseppe De Domenico from Messina, who previously co-starred in "ZeroZeroZero", based on the book by Roberto Saviano, and later portrayed Raffaele Sollecito in another series about the Perugia murder. Placido, on the other hand, makes a brief cameo appearance: he is in a church where he references his own work, showing the murder of Inspector Cattani in the cult series La piovra, which Livatino adores. In this scene, Placido plays the role of a priest, although off-set it is Mantovano who gives him the blessing.