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ROMPERE GLI ARGINI

This film is brilliant!

Another Filmmaker

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Company

★★★★★

Film info

  • Original title: Rompere gli argini / English title: Breaking the banks
  • Completion Date: 2024
  • Shooting format: HDSLR – 16/9 (Color)
  • Duration: 61 min
  • Screening format: DCP or mov file 422hq or mp4
  • Story and Screenplay: Margherita Becchetti, Ilaria La Fata, Lorenzo Melegari
  • Starring: Beatrice Baruffini
  • Voice Cast: Roberto Abbati, Beatrice Baruffini
  • Original Score: Andrea Marras
  • Produced by: Centro Studi Movimenti Parma
  • Editing, Sound Design and Colour Grading: Lorenzo Melegari
  • FESTIVAL: Official Selection of Filmare la storia (2024)

Synopsis

During the 1960s and 1970s, Parma, together with Trieste, became one of the first Italian cities to challenge the barriers of a closed and exclusionary society, working to restore dignity and freedom to people who had no say over their own lives.

Set on the thin line between mental health and madness, this
journey begins with the closure of the Colorno psychiatric hospital and follows the first alternatives to total institutions—showing that a different way was not only possible, but real.
Blending history, emotion, fiction and reality, the story is told through the eyes of a survivor who finds freedom, independence and love in a society that is beginning to change, yet remains, in many ways still hostile.

As the story reaches the present day, it invites us to ask whether the same forms of exclusion that these reforms set out to overcome still exist today, taking new shapes and affecting different groups of people: migrants, prisoners, people with disabilities, and many others.

Director’s statement

Working on this film gave me the privilege of revisiting an extraordinary period in history, when fundamental rights were expanded and dignity was restored to people who had long been excluded from society. It was a journey that deeply changed the way I see both the past and the present.

I hope the film offers audiences the same opportunity: to reflect on the distance between then and now, to consider the progress that has been made, and to question what still remains to be done.

The struggles that led to the closure of psychiatric institutions remind us that social change is never irreversible. Every generation has the responsibility to protect those achievements and to recognize new forms of exclusion and fighting to expand rights and freedoms for everyone.

Rompere gli argini – Trailer