Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Elain-ee I just can't believe that even now, there are people like one reviewer on this page who are so nakedly towing the fascist party line on Genoa. The Diaz raid WAS as bad as this film makes out... at least, according to the severely injured and traumatized protesters, it was. And, call me crazy, but their take on the events matters a lot more to me than what some disconnected overseas film critic who wasn't even there has to say. Especially a critic who is more or less quoting the same anti-communist lines that the police in this film dispensed as they were beating people up...! That aside, I want to say that this film, while overlong and brutal, is extremely hard to stop watching because it is so heartfelt. I was 24 when these events happened and I was attending the equivalent actions in London. Being that we were all so connected to the global anti-globalization movement (if that's not a contradiction in terms?) my friends and I were among the first people outside of Genoa to hear about the events at Diaz. Back then, I assumed from the descriptions given by Indymedia that it was pretty awful (they described the blood on the floor and walls, as well as the fact that women and elderly people were beaten in their sleep). Even so, I still didn't grasp the full extent of the damage until I saw this re-enactment. What would have been a good addition to this film, though, would have been to show some of the aftermath, in which various countries pursued justice for their respective citizens and were rebuffed by the Italian authorities with what can only be described as fascist zeal. This left the rest of Europe shaken, I believe, in the same way that the abuse meted out by the police left the left activist scene shaken. It was also a telling moment in the anti-capitalist movement, because it demonstrated how little the values of the masses actually mattered to the elite.One interesting commentary that kind of sums the whole event up was made by Nick Davies of the Guardian, eight years after the fact. He wrote that, at Genoa, "the police acted as though somebody had promised them impunity". Since none of the assailants ever served time for their crimes, we can safely assume that that promise was upheld... and continues to do so. But by whom? I guess the answer lies is in the name of the entity whose summit the Genoa Social Forum was protesting against.

Marcus Nessuno In Late April 2009, I got a call in London to come to Genova to meet several mystery guests who wanted to meet me and several of the other Diaz victims. I was coming anyway to see Dr Zucca (The Genova prosecutor) but I was intrigued to find out who the mystery guests were. I met Domenico Procacci and Daniele Vicari in Genova at the Via San Luca office (where the Diaz case is archived) in late May for a 'secret weekend meeting' after the Cannes Film Festival.At the time, I did not know who Procacci and Vicari were but I was told they were the best film producer and director in Italy and they wanted to make a movie of the raid on Diaz during the G8. I had seen Gomorrah, Procacci's mafia film and thought it was brilliant. Using this film as a comparison, I listened to what Domenico wanted to say to all of us present. Procacci explained to us that he had wanted to make a multi-million euro film about the raid for a long time but had been prevented because the trial process against the police.He was willing to risk a lot of money on the project and we could all see that Domenico and Daniele were committed to making the movie. I personally told them that whilst I had a lot of personal confidence, I thought the Diaz police would try and stop the project or the right ring politicians like Berlusconi or Fini my sue Fandango. I also told them that Diaz is still live court case and that they had to do a lot of research.After all of us from Diaz consulted with each other, we gave Domenico Procacci and Daniele Vicari permission to make the film. All of us were taking a risk allowing a production company like fandango access to the video evidence & photos and documents involved in the trial. However, we all felt that the story of the raid and what we had lived through had to be told to the rest of the world.What is unusual about the Diaz movie was that there was no script in existence, so Fandango commissioned Laura Paolucci to spend two years writing a script. The end result is a pulp fiction style film which is 80% true to the story of Diaz. Obviously, Vicari could not go into detail about the entire G8 which forms the backdrop for the beginning of the film but I think Vicari has done an almost perfect job of marrying together true events with a few high drama fictional characters.I think the combination of powerful high impact footage, recreated scenes and the chance of lifting the lift on the inside of the anti-globalization movement makes Diaz the movie a special film. The 2001 G8 was the biggest and worst riot in Europe in 60 years. To complete the film, Vicari has combined the usual high quality style of Italian film screening to capture this important moment of history, making it one of the best, most talked about and most controversial films to come out of Italy in 20 years.Only after the film had premiered in Berlin did I learn that Procacci had said that Diaz had been his most challenging and complicated film to make…with Vicari in agreement.My story is played by an Italian actor Pietro Ragusa and my almost death is one of the penultimate scenes in the movie. Because I ran out of Diaz, I took the full force of Canterini's unit, the 7th Mobile heavy riot unit that had specially trained for the Genova G8 summit. Pietro's part is almost as it exactly happened and I am very happy despite the scene is one of the most harrowing.

JvH48 The film "Diaz – Don't clear up the blood" had its world premiere in Berlin, as part of the Berlinale 2012 film festival, in front of a full house with an estimated 1,750 viewers. The screening ended with an overwhelming applause, that lasted for an unusual long time. A considerable part of those involved in making this film was present. In his introduction the director mentioned that several victims of the raid were among them. He admired their preparedness to relive the dire event.The film title has two parts. The first (Diaz) part refers to the name of the school where the raid took place. The police thinks it is a nest full of "black bloc", allegedly being the core of demonstrations around the G8 summit in 2001 in Genoa (Italy). The second (Don't clean...) part refers to a hand made sign that was written on the wall after the raid, actually asking to keep intact what was left behind. That included large blood stains all over floors and walls, very useful as indisputable contradictory statement against the police PR.A clever scenario circles around what happened, rather than treating events chronologically. An important feature of the film is that we were introduced to miscellaneous persons having specific roles later on. This served as a binding element, elevating the film above a simple documentary. As the director said: due to these minor roles, you better remember the events afterwards. We see for example an elderly tourist, who got detached from his bus tour and was only looking for a place to sleep. Another example is a journalist from a right-wing magazine, taking leave to report from the inside out. Many more such personal stories develop along the line, working out exactly as the director mentioned.We were also offered an impression how average policemen stand in this. The tone is set in a scene where we see how a police car gets lost in some neighborhood they better stay out. They are immediately surrounded by angry citizens calling them "murderers", the result of a recent event where one person was killed in the course of a demonstration. The policemen feel threatened but escape unharmed.Also from a law enforcement viewpoint, but on a different level, we observe several decision makers (district attorney, police commanders, city council, etc). They had to depend on biased reports from police officers, finally deciding to proceed on very weak grounds, but "we must do something". Various evidence was planted to support their decision, or declared solid evidence later on. Benign empty bottles were allegedly stocked there for making Molotov cocktails. The PR aftermath from the police was evidently biased too, Best example were remarks about prepared wounds, said to have already existed before the raid, with express intent to blame the police later on. Of course, speaking of obvious bias is easy for us to say; we had ample chance to see the general picture from both sides.The actual raid is visualized in full force, about halfway the two hours running time. What we see before and after this core scene, continuously circles around it by showing whereabouts of victims and bystanders, and how they got involved. All are clearly innocent of the bad things the police attributed to them. They all happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. These personal stories, however small and trivial in the context of what is happening, work very well to elevate this film above a dry documentary that only states facts.I could not help wondering how useful it is to show the raid in every nasty detail. One important reason is that pictures speak one thousand words. We can expect the impact on the average viewer to be much greater than only words. A second reason could be that the film clearly shows the needlessly exaggerated amount of police power put into force, just for a relatively small unarmed group. A perfect illustration was the scene were everyone was standing with hands above their heads, apparently believing that an explicit show of being unarmed and defenseless would suffice, but the police bulldozed over them regardless.We witnessed a meeting of city council and law enforcement decision makers, giving a clear insight how it could come that far. The proof that lefties (not my words) were gathering was very thin (long hair, hoodies, what further proof do we need?). Also noteworthy was a statement from the police commander that he would be unable to control his men once in action. After that we saw a rather sketchy briefing for the policemen in the field, merely amplifying already dormant feelings that Diaz housed very illegal, near-terrorist actions. After such a biased preparation the heavily visualized police brutality within Diaz becomes a bit more understandable. The instructions to the policemen conveyed an image of illegality, with adversaries determined to plan demonstrations and other unlawful actions.Part of the final credits were some statistics about policemen and other officials convicted for involvement in the action. That is how "the system" works, but I'm certain it took years to come to final convictions. And above all, it leaves us with doubts whether it will improve future decision making. And last but not least, it won't repair the (internal and external) wounds of the victims having to live on with the consequences.All in all, an impressive document about the raid, providing very useful insights in what happened before and after. The various personal stories bring it to a much higher level than just a documentary. Also very interesting is that we see both sides, and the mechanisms involved how things like this get out of control.

lasttimeisaw A KVIFF viewing, an Italian film from director Daniele Vicari, the film undertakes a sticky task to recount the fierce police assault on the so-called black-bloc group (mostly foreigners, students, journalists) after some protesters' affray in the final days of 2001 G8 Summit in Genova.The film's chief characteristic is its visual language, shockingly bold and deadly savage, which inevitably will be shunned by the demography of those are intolerable of graphic violence. One must admit, we are now in the era where news generally fade away in a 48-hour rotation, there are myriads of mostly recent "unfortunate incidents" have been erased from our mind, so as to this film takes a quite extreme measurement to remind us such horrifying and atrocious events did actually exist only a decade ago in a developed western country, with government authorities holding the reins. The very first scene, is a backward slow-motion of a protester slinging an empty bottle toward the police vehicles which are deliberately passing by the area, in order to procure a professed pretext to carry out the subsequent battery, so allegedly the entire action is ruthlessly plotted to set an example and to hector the masses. Two-thumbs up to the valor of the film, which fearlessly exposes the dark side of the government and the powerlessness of individual. But when the said slow-motion has been exploited multiple times, a dwindling impact inexorably occurs each time it recurs.Due to the fact the approach of depicting this scandalizing event in a multi-reflective manner, it entails a wide range of characters, local volunteers, various foreigners (among those are many innocent victims and the real peace-breakers who ironically evade the brute force), policemen who execute the operation, The numerous cast diffuses one's concentration while most roles are underwritten and loosely connected or fragmented, nevertheless Jennifer Ulrich gives a gutsy impression as a victim traumatized both outside and inside, Claudio Santamaria, also stands out among the bulk of cast, as the righteous Italian policeman who is more of a reluctant witness than a government's henchman or heavy.Anyway, with excellent editing, sound effects and a steady camera eye, the film is a quite mature work, on which one definitely could ruminate and alert oneself to be more conscious of the tragic happenings, they are just around us, be wise and be careful.