LORD OF THE ANTS

DIRECTED BY GIANNI AMELIO

YEAR

2022

DIRECTED BY

Gianni Amelio

CAST

Luigi Lo Cascio, Elio Germano, Leonardo Maltese, Sara Serraiocco, Anna Caterina Antonacci

In the late 1960s, a trial took place in Rome that caused a sensation.

The playwright and poet Aldo Braibanti was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment on charges of plagiarism, i.e. having subjected one of his students and friends, who had recently come of age, to his will, in a physical and psychological sense. The boy, at the behest of his family, was locked up in a psychiatric hospital and subjected to a series of devastating electric shocks so that he would 'recover' from that 'diabolical' influence.
A few years later, the crime of plagiarism was removed from the criminal code. But in reality it had served to indict the 'different' of all kinds, the outlaws of the norm.
Inspired by real events, the film tells a story with several voices,
where, alongside the accused, family and friends, accusers and supporters, and a mostly distracted or indifferent public opinion take shape.
Only one journalist undertakes to reconstruct the truth, facing suspicion and censure.