Diaz - Don't Clean Up This Blood

On the last night of the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001, police raid the Diaz school. Inside, young people who had joined the demonstration, journalists and an old man are asleep. Nobody resists. Ninety-three people are detained at the end of the raid, most of them badly injured, and taken to the Bolzaneto barracks. The film is not interested in the protest. It is interested in a state keeping its own record: it rests on the actual court files and shows the same moment repeatedly through different eyes. The Molotovs the police planted in the school are documented fabrication. The form is multi-perspective: around ten characters, rewinds, slow motion and a structure that keeps returning to the centre of the event. The violence is shown at length and unbroken. Daniele Vicari directed. The title comes from a sentence written on a wall at Bolzaneto. The film screened in the Panorama section of the Berlin festival in 2012 and won its audience award. The legal process in Italy ran for years; some of the responsible police commanders were convicted, but because torture was not defined as a crime in Italian law at the time the sentences stayed limited. The European Court of Human Rights later ruled against Italy over these events. Who it is for: viewers who like political events told with documentary rigour. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take long, direct violence. The film shows the raid close to real time.