PALAZZINA LAF (Italy, 2023, 99′)

Monday, September 30 at 9 pm, Associazione culturale Comala, C.so Francesco Ferrucci, 65/a

Event in collaboration with Associazione culturale Comala

Monday, September 30 at 9 pm Job Film Days, in collaboration with the Comala Cultural Association, presents Michele Riondino‘s directorial debut, Palazzina Laf. The film follows the story of a worker at Ilva in Taranto who, chosen by top management as a spy to identify workers deemed unruly, experiences firsthand the actual working conditions they are subjected to, a hell from which it is difficult to escape. Giuseppe Gariazzo (film critic) presents the film. Before the screening there will be a meeting with Gianluca Vitale (lawyer for the civil parties in the Ilvae trial) and Luigi Riso (Communet – Officine Corsare).

Method of access: free entry.

Director: Michele Riondino
Script and screenplay: Maurizio Braucci e Michele Riondino
Photography: Claudio Cofrancesco
Editing: Julien Panzarasa
Music: Teho Teardo
Cast: Michele Riondino, Elio Germano, Vanessa Scalera, Domenico Fortunato, Gianni D’Addario, Michele Sinisi, Fulvio Pepe, Marina Limosani, Eva Cela, Anna Ferruzzo, Paolo Pierobon
Production: Palomar, Bravo, BIM Distribuzione

The film is set in 1997 and the main character is Caterino, a simple and rough man, one of the many workers in Taranto’s Ilva industrial complex. He lives in a farmhouse that has fallen in disgrace because it is too close to the steelworks. Despite his idleness, he shares with his young girlfriend the dream of moving to the city. When the top management decides to use him as a spy to identify which workers to get rid of, Caterino begins to tail his colleagues and participate in strikes solely in search of reasons to denounce them. Soon, not understanding its degradation, he also asks to be placed in the Palazzina Laf (Laf apartment block), where some employees, as punishment, are forced to remain deprived of their usual duties. These workers have no other activity but to pass the time playing cards, praying or working out as if they were in a gym. Caterino finds out by himself that what appears to be a paradise is nothing more than a perverse strategy to psychologically bend the most inconvenient workers, pushing them to resign or be demoted. And there is no way out of that hell for him.

Michele Riondino (Taranto, 1979). After his years of study in Apulia, he moved to Rome to attend the Silvio D’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art. He made his debut in the television series Distretto di Polizia where he appeared for three seasons from 2003 to 2005. In cinema he took part in Uomini & donne, verità e bugie (2003), Eleonora Giorgi debut as director, followed by Daniele Vicari’s Il passato è una terra straniera (2008), which earned him a nomination for the Nastri d’Argento. Then in 2009 he starred in Marco Risi’s Fortapasc and Valerio Mieli’s Dieci inverni, with which in 2010 he won the Guglielmo Biraghi Prize, awarded to young actors who have made a name for themselves in Italian cinema. In 2011 he was in the TV series Il segreto dell’acqua and in 2012 in the Il giovane Montalbano. Over the years he devoted himself to theatre and worked with directors such as Marco Bellocchio, Emma Dante, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Andrea Baracco and Alex Rigola. He is the director of Alessandra Mortelliti’s La vertigine del drago (The Dragon’s Vertigo), with supervision of Andrea Camilleri’s texts, which is staged for the first time at the Spoleto Festival dei due Mondi. In the cinema we find him in Gli sfiorati (2011) by Matteo Rovere, Bella addormentata (2012) by Bellocchio and Acciaio (2012) by Stefano Mordini. In 2013 he returned to theatre direction with Siamosolonoi by Marco Andreoli. For the big screen he stars in Il giovane favoloso (2014) by Mario Martone and Maraviglioso Boccaccio (2015) by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. For TV, he is in the cast of the miniseries Pietro Mennea – La freccia del sud and La guerra è finita. Although television gives him great success, it is the cinema that recognises his worth and so it is that for his performance in Marco Danieli’s La ragazza del mondo (2016) he is nominated as best leading actor at the David di Donatello, the Golden Globe and together with co-star Sara Serraiocco at the Ciak d’oro. He returned to theatre directing with Angelicamente anarchici by Marco Andreoli. In 2018 he got back to the small screen playing Inspector Giovanni Bovara in La mossa del cavallo – C’era una volta Vigata. In 2019 he is in the Netflix series Loyalty and in 2022 in I leoni di Sicilia. In 2018 he was the godfather of the 75th Venice International Film Festival. In cinema he is in Falchi (2017) by Tony D’Angelo, Diva! (2017) by Francesco Patierno, Restiamo amici (2018) by Antonello Grimaldi, Un’avventura (2019) by Marco Danieli, I nostri fantasmi (2021) by Alessandro Capitani, De man uit Rome (2022) by Jaap van Heusden and Interstate (2023) by Jean-Luc Herbulot. In 2023, he directed his first feature film, Palazzina Laf, also starring in it.

Filmography (as director): Palazzina Laf (2023).