Coming to TV early next year, the series of Lucio Pellegrini 'Our general' who, forty years after the massacre in via Carini, re-proposes the story of Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and 'his' boys from the special anti-terrorism unit. A sort of 'docufiction', halfway between real footage and the use of archival images and footage, in which the events of the country and the most intimate and personal story are intertwined.
Our general
“A man of peace in uniform, who has lived all his life in war. Men like this no longer make them, even anthropologically. We have tried to stage the soul of a man who, in an age of cynicism and irony, said that 'certain things are done to keep looking at one's children'. Not to look at yourself, so to look to the future”. Thus the protagonist Sergio Castellitto who received the honorary carabiniere card. The series, co-production Rai Fiction-Stand By Me, was premiered at the Turin Film Festival by Castellitto and the directors Lucio Pellegrini and Andrea Jublin.
It will be broadcast on Rai1 on 9, 10, 16 and 17 January, divided into eight episodes. “Dalla Chiesa was killed 40 years ago, in 1982, and this is the fortieth Turin Film Festival. The Tff has begun the year of the attack, it is right to present it here. It is a film that has the value of testimony, of memory. My son, who is fifteen, did not know who Dalla Chiesa was”. The actor reiterates this, underlining the great availability of the general's family, in particular of his daughter Rita, but also the role of the General Command of the Carabinieri which made it possible to shoot in real places.
"For the country it is a wound that is still open, deeply, for example in the relationship with its family, with its children", underlines Castellitto. The series is produced by Simona Ercolani and is written by Monica Zapelli and Peppe Fiore, with the historical consultancy of Giovanni Biancon. It is the historical reconstruction of the special anti-terrorism unit created by general by the Church in Northern Italy in the 70s. An organism born to fight the attack of the Red Brigades on the State. The narrative kicks off in 1973, when the General from the Church is transferred from Palermo, where he was engaged in the fight against the mafia, in Turin.
The state first
In the Piedmontese capital le Red Brigades they are starting to claim their first armed propaganda actions. The general is the first to understand the extent of the danger to Italian democracy and the need to counter it with new investigative means. Dalla Chiesa sets up the Special Anti-Terrorism Unit, a select group of very young men, highly specialized and able to move in environments close to the members of the Red Brigades. For the "general's boys the fight against terrorism becomes an all-encompassing commitment, there are no holidays, breaks or private life. The state comes first!
